Association of Increased Fluvoxamine Use with Reports of Benefit for COVID
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Abstract
Introduction
Several recent studies have found that fluvoxamine decreases the risk of serious disease progression among people with early SARS-CoV-2 infection. In this study, we examined changes in the total number of fluvoxamine tablets dispensed across retail pharmacies in the U.S.
Methods
We hypothesized that fluvoxamine prescriptions would increase substantially since March 2021 as an option for the early treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We used the IQVIA National Prescription Audit (NPA) Weekly nationally projected data for prescriptions dispensed from retail pharmacies for fluvoxamine from 27 December 2019 to 31 December 2021. We performed an interrupted-time series analyses on frequency of dispensing fluvoxamine tablets.
Results
The weekly rate of dispensed tablets of fluvoxamine increased throughout the study period. The weekly number of dispensed tablets of fluvoxamine increased (11.1%) from a baseline of 1,586,154 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1,563,960 – 1,608,348) to 1,762,381 (95% CI: 1,735,682 – 1,789,080) by December 2021.
Conclusion
Our findings are consistent with a modest increase in the use of fluvoxamine for the treatment of COVID-19 associated with the discovery and media dissemination of the potential clinical benefit of fluvoxamine use.
Article activity feed
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SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.19.22269020: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter:…
SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.19.22269020: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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