Abstract:
Two years into this historic pandemic, the scientific and healthcare communities continue to learn a great deal regarding COVID-19. The most urgent and immediate focus has been on vaccine development for disease prevention/mitigation and on identification of effective therapeutic interventions for acute phase of illness. However, attention is increasingly being placed on formulating treatment strategies for individuals who are post-COVID-19 and experiencing a syndrome of persistent symptoms that is being referred to as long COVID.
One strategy is to repurpose drugs which have been approved for other conditions and subsequently assess their safety and efficacy when applied to COVID-19. In this light, antidepressant medications have garnered attention amidst evidence supporting anti-inflammatory and anti-viral properties.
In this article, we present purported anti-inflammatory mechanisms of antidepressants, review studies appearing in the literature to date regarding antidepressants and acute COVID-19, and discuss the utility of antidepressants as a potential therapeutic resource for long COVID.
Source: Rivas-Vázquez R, Carrazana EJ, Blais MA, Rey GJ, RivasVázquez E, Quintana AA. Long COVID: Is There a Role for Antidepressants? Neurol Curr Res. 2022;2(3):1019. https://www.medtextpublications.com/open-access/long-covid-is-there-a-role-for-antidepressants-1249.pdf (Full text)