The COVID Advisor

Developed 40 years ago as an antidepressant, fluvoxamine—sometimes known as Luvox—has been used mainly to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), per the  National Alliance on Mental Illness   (NAMI). But now, researchers are taking a closer look at how the medication could be an important treatment to prevent patients who test positive for COVID-19 from getting seriously ill with the infection. In a new interview with  60 Minutes , Angela Reiersen, MD, a child psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis—and co-author of a November 2020 study published in the  Journal of the American Medical Association  (JAMA)  regarding the use of fluvoxamine in COVID-19 patients—explained that she first got the idea that the drug could potentially treat COVID-19 after seeing  research  that fluvoxamine prevented sepsis in mice. "I thought, well, I wonder if we could use fluvoxamine to treat COVID and prevent that clinical deterioration," Dr. Reiersen told  60 Minutes . Dr. Reiers

Coronaviruses range from the common cold to more severe infections such as SARS (SARS-CoV) and MERS (MERS-CoV) and the current Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2). As yet there is no FDA-approved vaccine to prevent coronavirus infections. These both have FDA emergency use authorization. AFP / DOMINICK REUTER Two of the Covid-19 vaccines available in the US use messenger RNA technology to prevent or reduce the symptoms of Covid-19 infection.   This mRNA vaccine technology is new; the consequences of altered DNA, if any, are unknown. However,  others,  including the  CDC  said that the vaccine would not interact with DNA. Other scientists believe that mRNA vaccines can enter and permanently alter DNA.  Like DNA vaccines, RNA vaccines use part of the genetic code of the virus to get the immune system to respond.  An  article  currently in preprint (not yet peer reviewed) discusses a lab study in which some pieces of Covid-19 RNA were converted to DNA and then integrated into human chromosomes.   Medica

As of April 2021, there are more than 80 on-going trials globally on Ivermectin for treatment and prevention of COVID-19 on  covid-nma.com . Source: covid-nma.com Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic medication widely used in low and middle-income countries (LMIC) to treat parasitic worm infections in adults and children. It’s been used for decades for this purpose by over 3.7 billion people, and is considered safe and effective. It has an increasing list of indications due to its antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, and is included on the WHO’s Model List of Essential Medicines. In April last year, a trial at Melbourne’s Monash University  reported  doses of ivermectin stopped or slowed the spread of COVID-19 infection in the lab environment. The researchers said the findings could not be immediately applied to humans but the drug still surged in popularity across  Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala and other Latin American countries . The medical community is battling over whether ivermectin