Can antidepressants unlock prescription of rimonabant in the fight against COVID-19?
Résumé
We read with real enthusiasm the paper by Hoertel et al. showing an “association between antidepressant use and reduced risk of intubation or death in hospitalized patients with COVID-19”. Their observation reinforces preliminary data of a double-blind, randomized clinical trial showing significant reduction of COVID-19 worsening in outpatients treated with fluvoxamine. By the time those promising results should obviously stimulate organization of large randomized clinical trials on the use of antidepressants in the fight against COVID-19, we want to plead for introducing rimonabant combined to an antidepressant in some of those trials as well as in preclinical studies.