Fluvoxamine, an antidepressant drug, cuts down the rates of hospitalization and death among patients infected with Coronavirus up to 32% and 91% respectively, Canadian researchers have claimed in a study.
The study was led by researchers at the McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada in collaboration with the Cardresearch, a Brazilian research clinic. It was recently published in The Lancet Global Health journal.
Cardresearch helped Canadian researchers to recruit 1,497 unvaccinated and high-risk individuals in their first week of Coronavirus symptoms from all over Brazil.
The trial was simultaneously held in 11 locations in Brazil between January and August this year. The participants were divided into two equal groups. One group completed an entire course of 100 milligrams tablets of fluvoxamine while the other group received placebo pills twice a day for 10 days.
119 out of 756 patients of the placebo group developed complications that required hospitalization or emergency care spanning over six hours. In contrast, 79 out of 741 patients of the fluvoxamine group faced complications that prompted similar care. As a result, researchers have claimed that fluvoxamine cuts hospitalization and emergency care rates by 32%.
12 out of 756 patients of the placebo group died while only 1 out of 741 patients of the fluvoxamine group died. This is why researchers have claimed that fluvoxamine reduces the mortality rate by 91%.
Around three-fourths of patients of fluvoxamine completed at least 80% of the course’s pills. They stopped taking the medicine after they faced gastrointestinal problems.
In light of these findings coupled with the fact that fluvoxamine is already approved by the US Federal Drug Authority (FDA) and its long-standing safety record, McMaster researchers have called on the public health agencies across the world to use fluvoxamine among COVID-19 patients facing a high risk of morbidity and mortality from complications of the viral infection.
