Certain antidepressants would reduce the risk of a severe form of Covid-19, in particular by avoiding intubations. A study supports the observation of a French psychiatrist who found that patients hospitalized in his department seemed spared from the disease.
- The risk of intubation or death is 40% lower for Covid patients treated with antidepressants
- Patients in an AP-HP psychiatric department, although presenting comorbidities, had been spared from serious forms of the disease
The use of antidepressants could reduce the risk of death or intubation in patients with severe forms of Covid-19. This is revealed a study published February 4 in the journal Molecular Psychiatry owned by the Nature group. This unexpected effect concerns several types of antidepressants, fluoxetine, paroxetine, escitalopram, venlafaxine and mirtazapine. The study focused on 7,230 adults hospitalized for Covid-19 in AP-HP establishments. Among them, 345 received an antidepressant within 48 hours of their hospitalization and, after the adjustments taking into account the characteristics of the patients and the degree of severity of the disease, it appeared that the latter were at risk of intubation and significantly lower deaths (minus 40%) than those who had not received antidepressants.
It is the result of previous studies that led researchers to verify this link between antidepressants and a reduction in the serious consequences of Covid-19. These studies had established on the one hand the association between drugs for major depressive disorders and the reduction of plasma levels of pro-inflammatory mediators involved in severe Covid-19 and on the other hand the inhibitory effect of several antidepressants on the acid sphingomyelinase, an effect capable of preventing infection of epithelial cells by SARS-CoV-2.
Psychiatric patients surprisingly spared from the disease
In addition, Dr Nicolas Hoertel, psychiatrist and researcher at AP-HP and INSERM and author of the study published in the journal of the Nature group, had, according to his comments collected by 20 Minutes, observed that his patients hospitalized in psychiatry during the first wave of the epidemic were little affected by the disease. “We know that patients hospitalized in shrink often have other comorbidities such as heart problems and our service receives a lot of elderly people,” said the doctor to 20 Minutes . All the conditions were therefore met for these patients to be strongly affected by Covid-19 and its severe forms… which was not the case. “We did not understand, added Nicolas Hoertel, but a hypothesis emerged, that of the protection of certain psychotropic drugs against Covid-19”.
Would the antidepressants whose prescription has increased due to the effects of the crisis on the morale of the French ultimately be one of the drugs expected to treat severe forms of Covid-19? A clinical trial would have been carried out in the United States with fluvoxamine, an antidepressant close to the famous Prozac, and would also have given spectacular results, no serious form of the disease having appeared in the 80 patients treated with this drug.
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