Patrick Collison, one of the funders of this research via the Fast Grants program (https://fastgrants.org/), tweeted an excellent summary the results a few days ago:
"
Participants received 50 mg FLV QD on day 1, then for 2 days 100 mg FLV BID, and then 100 mg FLV TID as tolerated through day 15 and then stopped.
"
Fluvoxamine has been long off patent. Based on my slap-dash googling of online pharmacies, this treatment would cost under US$10 total.
The hypothesized mechanisms of action are the anti-inflammatory, anti-platelet, and potentially antiviral activities which are side effects of Fluvoxamine's psychoactive properties. These mechanisms would counter some of the more serious body responses to the more severe cases of covid.
All sigma 1 agonists in test for covid seem to work very well to prevent serious disease symptoms and death. They appear to modulate the immune system's response to the virus (including cytokine storm) which is what causes most of the damage.
I'm going to be skeptical until the paper comes out. There was a lot of initial data on Hydroxychloroquine that looked good and it ended up being only noise (and bad study designs).
So far all I see is PR and nothing published or peer reviewed.
They are late to the party, fluvoxamine and it's effects on Covid was already investigated and published by a team at Washington University in St Louis a last year in JAMA [0]
It's not the only medicine that has a potential effect on Covid-19 infection. Colchicine [1] for instance.
You need to taper off. And I mean really gradually over weeks. Sadly, they don't even work for me, yet doctors are hellbent on me trying them and won't prescribe anything else. Guess I'll die lol
Brain zaps. Feeling like I was going to puke all day every day for a month. I somehow avoided one of the more common side-effects and withdrawal symptoms: panic and/or anxiety. The two reasons I was taking the SSRI's to begin with.
I should have done the research beforehand to know that the medication has the potential to make worse the symptoms it is supposed to remedy.
In the end, therapy did way more for me than those pills ever did.
I had 0 issues when I've stopped, I've been on Voxra (bupropion) and Escitalopram. Meds that cause brain zaps like Voxra need to be stopped over a longer period of time, for me I got off them in a month after being on the max dose but for many that's way too fast as well.
Because "science by PR" is the new fashion. Back in my day, we waited for the peer reviewed publication, and tied onions to our belts, which was the style at the time.
I'd really like to see what effect Opipramol/Insidon has on COVID patients. If the results were similar to Fluvoxamine, that would very strongly suggest that the mechanism of action is via the σ1 receptor.
> “Fluvoxamine is the only treatment that, if administered early, can prevent COVID-19 from becoming a life-threatening illness,”
Actually many front-line doctors have been using a multidrug treatment based on existing medicines to successfully reduce hospitalization and death since very early on in the pandemic. One key aspect is treating patients early in the symptomatic phase with a combination of antiviral, corticosteroid, and antithrombotic medications. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Many clinical trials have evaluated the suggested drugs in a single-drug treatment regime, but very few clinical trials have evaluated a multidrug treatment approach specifically focused on patients who are early in the symptomatic phase.
[10] Repurposed Drugs, Molecular Vaccines, Immune‐Modulators, and Nanotherapeutics to Treat and Prevent COVID‐19 Associated with SARS‐CoV‐2, a Deadly Nanovector
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645867/
Brazil has become a big open air experiment on the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin and/or Ivermectin, separately and together. Those specific drugs don't seem to help that much, if at all. On the other hand, they may have severe side effects. (Dexamethasone do work in critically ill patients though)
It's a tough call. I really want to support science and probably some combination of drugs in the above studies work. It's just hard to know which ones.
> I really want to support science and probably some combination of drugs in the above studies work. It's just hard to know which ones
Agreed, and thanks for the reference. Here are some promising results from a well designed and recently completed RCT evaluating Ivermectin in combination with doxycycline [1].
I would assume that most patients don’t seek medical care until they are having symptoms they can’t manage at home.
I don’t know how useful drugs are that have to be used in the early symptom phase. Does this require everybody to present themselves to a doctor every time they get upper respiratory symptoms?
I don’t think that’s the case. Most governments tell people to get a test if they have symptoms and the vast majority of tests are negative. This indicates that people are getting tests with mild symptoms of maybe-covid, in large numbers.
Doubtful due to side effects. At most this will be a treatment for patients with confirmed infection. And then probably only after the results are reproduced in a larger clinical trial.
Anything to slow the spread seems to be an option these days. Two years ago the idea of vaccine passports would be unimaginable by the gentry, yet here we are.
Was anyone testing "vitamine B15" effect? It seems to improve oxygen utilisation so maybe could be helpful. I can't find many articles related to covid.
https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1427367934880469010
n=1,472 patients; ~1/3 reduction in hospitalization; now pursuing a larger scale trial to replicate the results
The actual research results are here:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2021.6526...
From the paper, dosage in the trial was:
" Participants received 50 mg FLV QD on day 1, then for 2 days 100 mg FLV BID, and then 100 mg FLV TID as tolerated through day 15 and then stopped. "
Fluvoxamine has been long off patent. Based on my slap-dash googling of online pharmacies, this treatment would cost under US$10 total.
The hypothesized mechanisms of action are the anti-inflammatory, anti-platelet, and potentially antiviral activities which are side effects of Fluvoxamine's psychoactive properties. These mechanisms would counter some of the more serious body responses to the more severe cases of covid.