Antidepressant used to treat OCD shows promise as COVID-19 early treatment

OCD drug might help treat COVID-19
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/60 Minutes)

The U.S. is now vaccinating more than 2 million adults a day against COVID-19, but "we know that vaccines are not going to reach everybody across the entire planet in the next couple of weeks," National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins told Sharyn Alfonsi on Sunday's 60 Minutes. "People are going to continue to get sick in the meantime," and "we need treatments for those people."

Specifically, Collins said, "a big need right now is for a drug that you can take by mouth that you could be offered as soon as you had a positive test and that would reduce the likelihood that that virus is going to make you very sick. And we have some very good clues there," one of them being the generic antidepressant fluvoxamine, developed 40 years ago and used most commonly to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.