Anti-depression drug promising for COVID

Fluvoxamine is cheap and readily available

A cheap antidepressant reduced the need for hospitalization among highrisk adults with COVID-19 in a study hunting for existing drugs that could be repurposed to treat coronavirus.

Researchers tested the pill used for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder because it was known to reduce inflammation and looked promising in smaller studies.

They’ve shared the results with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which publishes treatment guidelines, and they hope for a World Health Organization recommendation.

“If WHO recommends this, you will see it widely taken up,” said study co-author Dr. Edward Mills of Mcmaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, adding that many poor nations have the drug readily available. “We hope it will lead to a lot of lives saved.”

The pill, called fluvoxamine, would cost $4 for a course of COVID-19 treatment.

By comparison, antibody IV treatments cost about $2,000 and Merck’s experimental antiviral pill for COVID-19 is about $700 per course. Some experts predict various treatments eventually will be used in combination to fight the coronavirus.

The results, published Wednesday in the journal Lancet Global Health, were so strong that independent experts monitoring the study recommended stopping it early because the results were clear.

Questions remain about the best dosing, whether lower risk patients might also benefit and whether the pill should be combined with other treatments.

The larger project looked at eight existing drugs to see if they could work against the pandemic virus.

The project is still testing a hepatitis drug, but all the others — including metformin, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin — haven’t panned out.

The cheap generic and Merck’s COVID-19 pill work in different ways and “may be complementary,” said Dr. Paul Sax of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study.

Earlier this month, Merck asked regulators in the U.S. and Europe to authorize its antiviral pill.

Meanwhile, Merck agreed to allow other drugmakers to produce its COVID-19 pill, in a move aimed at helping millions of people in poorer countries get access to the drug, a U.n.-backed public health organization said on Wednesday.

The Medicines Patent Pool said it had signed a voluntary licensing agreement for molnupiravir with Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.

In other developments:

■ Twenty-one Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday saying they think his COVID-19 vaccination mandate for federal contractors “stands on shaky legal ground,” is confusing to contractors and could exacerbate supply-chain problems.

■ At least 59,000 meatpacking workers caught COVID-19 and 269 workers died when the virus tore through the industry last year, which is significantly more than previously thought, according to a new U.S. House report released Wednesday.

■ A New York judge on Wednesday refused to pause a vaccine mandate set to take effect Friday for the city’s municipal workforce, denying a police union’s request for a temporary restraining order.

■ The mayor of the Florida county that is home to Orlando and the nation’s biggest theme park resorts is lifting a pandemic-related state of emergency order. Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said he was letting the order expire Wednesday afternoon.

■ New Orleans is largely ending a mandate requiring residents and visitors wear masks indoors, the city’s mayor announced Wednesday.