Beyond “Psychotropic”: Repurposing Psychiatric Drugs for COVID-19, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Cancer, 2023, Santosh et al

Beyond “Psychotropic”: Repurposing Psychiatric Drugs for COVID-19, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Cancer
https://www.psychiatrist.com/jcp/be...tric-drugs-covid-19-alzheimer-disease-cancer/


Importance: “Psychotropic” drugs have widespread reach and impact throughout the brain and body. Thus, many of these drugs could be repurposed for non-psychiatric indications of high public health impact.

Observations: The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) fluvoxamine was shown efficacious as a COVID-19 treatment based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and a benefit of other antidepressants has been posited based on observational and preclinical studies. In this review, we illuminate features of SSRIs and other psychiatric drugs that make them candidates to repurpose for non-psychiatric indications. We summarize research that led to fluvoxamine’s use in COVID-19 and provide guidance on how to use it safely. We summarize studies suggestive of benefit of other antidepressants versus COVID-19 and long COVID. We also describe putative mechanisms of psychiatric drugs in treating long COVID, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and other conditions.

Conclusion and Relevance: There is a potentially great clinical and public health impact of psychotropic drug repurposing. Challenges exist to such repurposing efforts, but solutions exist for researchers, regulators, and funders that overcome these challenges.

 

I've seen some discussions lately of fluvoxamine and its possible relevance to both COVID and Long Covid, especially given their "other" properties. I've long suspected that SSRIs have much more to explain their impacts than some "antidepressant" effect, or even the simple blocking of serotonin receptors.

Unfortunately the obsession over biopsychosocial ideology and its cheap reductionism over simple terms like "depression" and "anxiety" seems to take all the air out of this avenue of research. This is so much more complex than this, and although I don't think that SSRIs are likely to be especially significant, they seem to be a step on the way to understanding where immunity influences behavior and systemic/overall well-being.

This particular caught my eye:

 

Bit similar here:

SSRIs differentially modulate the effects of pro-inflammatory stimulation on hippocampal plasticity and memory via sigma 1 receptors and neurosteroids
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-023-02343-3

 

I wonder how many of these drugs being touted for re-purposing are highly addictive. I wouldn't take a drug I thought was going to wreck my life with an addiction.

Edit : Given that doctors have denied that many common drugs in use throughout the last 70 years are addictive and patients have been told that weaning off is not necessary, I simply wouldn't trust a doctor on this issue.

 

Sounds like it might be effective in preventing LC. Not sure if it would be in treating LC though. I searched and found this: Effect of fluvoxamine on preventing neuropsychiatric symptoms of post COVID syndrome in mild to moderate patients, a randomized placebo-controlled double-blind clinical trial - PMC (nih.gov)

 

According to the better studies we've seen fluvoxamine has no effect on Covid or preventing LC:

• Trial Report Outpatient treatment of Covid-19 and the development of Long Covid..., 2023, Bramante et al
• Metformin reduces SARS-CoV-2 in a Phase 3 Randomized Placebo Controlled Clinical Trial
• Randomized Trial of Metformin, Ivermectin, and Fluvoxamine for Covid-19
• Lack of Benefit of Fluvoxamine for COVID-19
• Effect of Fluvoxamine vs Placebo on Time to Sustained Recovery in Outpatients With Mild to Moderate COVID-19A Randomized Clinical Trial

Unless someone can actually produce good evidence this seems no different to the Ivermectin conspiracy which had to undergo multiple trials showing it didn't work, even though there was no evidence it would work in the first place, all of this money could have been better spent elsewhere to actually help people.