Fluvoxamine, a drug that treats obsessive-compulsive disorder, could reduce the risk of respiratory deterioration and subsequent hospitalization in patients with early COVID-19, according to study results published Nov. 12 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study, which was conducted by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and funded by the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, gathered 152 adults with mild COVID-19 cases living in Missouri or Illinois. Via home delivery, 80 participants received fluvoxamine, and 72received a placebo. Fluvoxamine has significant anti-inflammatory properties that medical researchers believe could prevent the body's inflammatory reactions to the novel coronavirus.
None of the participants who took fluvoxamine hit the endpoint of clinical deterioration — oxygen saturation of 92 percent or lower as well as difficulty breathing or hospitalization for pneumonia — but six of the participants who took a placebo did. The researchers concluded that fluvoxamine, if taken within the first seven days of first symptoms of COVID-19, could reduce the risk of hospitalization.
"The results of the fluvoxamine trial are encouraging and warrant a further evaluation in a larger study," Carolyn Machamer, PhD, a professor of cell biology at the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a member of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund's scientific advisory board said in a news release. "A treatment that can prevent lung problems in people with mild symptoms of COVID-19 is desperately needed."
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