Covid: antidepressants confirm their effectiveness against severe form of the disease – The HuffPost

Shana Novak via Getty Images

COVID – A year ago, it was “a note of hope”. Today it has become “great news”. For doctor Nicolas Hoertel of the AP-HP, one of the first to have studied the effect of some antidepressants on the serious form of Covid-19, there is something to celebrate. Published in the review The Lancet Global Health, the conclusions of a randomized trial conducted in Brazil are as hoped.

741 patients received fluvoxamine as a curative treatment for Covid, and 756 were treated with a placebo, for an average age of 50 years. At the end of the trial, conducted from January to June 2021, the results are clear: the risk of hospitalization is reduced by 66% in patients who have taken the treatment. Mortality, it drops by 85% in this same population.

“The result is crazy” enthuses Dr. Hoertel. “Even we did not expect such an effect” on the randomized trial, he adds. His team had conducted in 2021 a study on the repositioning of two molecules present in certain antidepressants, fluoxetine and fluvoxamine, and their curative properties on Covid. The encouraging results obtained in France have since been coupled with those of several teamsgerman, which made it possible to understand its action.

Inhibitory effect of the virus

The antidepressants studied have an inhibitory effect on acid sphingomyelinase (ASM), an enzyme present on the surface of cells. However, blocking this enzyme affects the presence of ACE2 receivers, a real gateway to the virus, at the center of all the attention of specialists since the start of the pandemic. It is in particular the role of this receptor which explains the anosmia (loss of smell) of many patients with Covid-19.

The virus infects the respiratory cavity, passing through this famous receptor. Component of several types of cells, such as stem cells and blood vessels, its role in our body is complex and essential. In infected patients, this made it possible to stop the progression of the virus, and to prevent the Covid from passing from its symptomatic form, but benign, to a serious form leading to hospitalization.

This large-scale Brazilian randomized trial places fluvoxamine in the very short list of curative drugs potentially effective against the coronavirus, but it is not yet possible to prescribe it. Other publications should take place in November, further confirming the effectiveness of these molecules, in particular fluoxetine. The benefit-risk balance remains to be evaluated for each type of patient: antidepressants, even at low doses, can cause significant side effects.

See also on The HuffPost: Why France has ordered 50,000 doses of anti-Covid pills