Potential Role of the Antidepressants Fluoxetine and Fluvoxamine in the Treatment of COVID-19

Mapping non-canonical cellular pathways affected by approved medications can accelerate drug repurposing efforts, which are crucial in situations with a global impact such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Fluoxetine and fluvoxamine are well-established and widely-used antidepressive agents that act as sero...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of molecular sciences 2022-03, Vol.23 (7), p.3812
Main Authors: Mahdi, Mohamed, Hermán, Levente, Réthelyi, János M, Bálint, Bálint László
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
acid sphingomyelinase
Antidepressants
Antidepressive Agents - pharmacology
Antidepressive Agents - therapeutic use
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 Drug Treatment
Cytokine storm
Drug dosages
Enzymes
Fluoxetine
Fluoxetine - pharmacology
Fluoxetine - therapeutic use
Fluvoxamine
Fluvoxamine - pharmacology
Fluvoxamine - therapeutic use
Genomes
Humans
Infections
Intensive care
Ligands
Lysosomes
Pandemics
Patients
Proteins
Psychotropic drugs
Review
SARS-CoV-2
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors - pharmacology
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors - therapeutic use
Serotonin
Serotonin uptake inhibitors
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Sphingomyelin phosphodiesterase
SSRI
Viral infections
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Summary:Mapping non-canonical cellular pathways affected by approved medications can accelerate drug repurposing efforts, which are crucial in situations with a global impact such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Fluoxetine and fluvoxamine are well-established and widely-used antidepressive agents that act as serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI-s). Interestingly, these drugs have been reported earlier to act as lysosomotropic agents, inhibitors of acid sphingomyelinase in the lysosomes, and as ligands of sigma-1 receptors, mechanisms that might be used to fight severe outcomes of COVID-19. In certain cases, these drugs were administered for selected COVID-19 patients because of their antidepressive effects, while in other cases, clinical studies were performed to assess the effect of these drugs on treating COVID-19 patients. Clinical studies produced promising data that encourage the further investigation of fluoxetine and fluvoxamine regarding their use in COVID-19. In this review, we summarize experimental data and the results of the performed clinical studies. We also provide an overview of previous knowledge on the tissue distribution of these drugs and by integrating this information with the published experimental results, we highlight the real opportunity of using these drugs in our fight against COVID-19.
ISSN:1422-0067
1661-6596
1422-0067
DOI:10.3390/ijms23073812