Fluvoxamine may reduce the odds of COVID-19 patient hospitalizationA new systematic review and meta-analysis of three randomized clinical trials with 2,196 patients suggests that early use of the antidepressant fluvoxamine reduces the risk of all-cause hospitalization in symptomatic adult outpatients.Fluvoxamine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor used to treat conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder, also activates the sigma-1 receptor, which quells inflammation, the researchers noted.McGill University researchers in Montreal led the study, which was published yesterday in JAMA Network Open.
They extracted study data from the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform and ClinicalTrials.gov on Nov 12, 2021.
All three clinical trials recruited unvaccinated COVID-19 outpatients with symptoms who had tested positive within 7 days of diagnosis but did not require supplemental oxygen.The relative risk [RR] of a 50% chance of fluvoxamine effectiveness against hospitalization was 0.78, while it was 0.73 for an 85% chance of efficacy against hospital admission.
A sensitivity analysis yielded an RR of 0.75.Depending on the scenario, the odds of any link with reduced hospitalization after fluvoxamine treatment were 94.1% to 98.6%, and the probability of a moderate association were 81.6% to 91.8%.Previous studies of fluvoxamine in COVID-19 patients have generated mixed results, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America recently recommended against its use in COVID-19 outpatients except in clinical trials.