Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 247 posts

Re: Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

#41

Post by fallingknife »

rscho wrote: post #26
chmod600 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what the other post had in mind, but does seem like smaller effect sizes have a way of evaporating under scrutiny. One third is pretty big when looking at it from a group perspective, but not really that big from a personal perspective. If someone told me that taking a pill would reduce my chances of hospitalization by 5%, I would certainly be looking closely at the side effects.

5% is not a pointwise prediction at the individual level. You can't interpret it like you did.

In a way it is though. There is a 84% chance you wouldn't go to the hospital either way, an 11% chance that you will go to the hospital either way, and a 5% chance that you will be saved from going to the hospital. So there is a 1 in 20 chance that this drug will save you from being hospitalized. It could also make your illness less severe in the other scenarios though.

Re: Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

#42

Post by novaRom »

darkerside wrote: post #19
SkittyDog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

16% > 11% represents a 31% decrease in the absolute number of hospitalizations. That's nearly a ONE THIRD improvement in the hospitalization rate. In places where hospitals are at or near capacity, that would make a huge difference. Or were you trying to make a statement about the statistical validity of the result, because the outcomes differ by 5%? Because that's not how statistics work. A well constructed study of…

N = 1500 One sample had 79-86 out of 750 hospitalized, and the other had 117-123 out of 750. Does that seem sufficient to demonstrate statistical significance? Edit: found the actual numbers in the study 79 [11%] of 741 vs 119 [16%] of 756

I wish every news media to show original numbers always, not percentage.

Re: Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

#43

Post by matjet »

SkittyDog wrote: post #18
s5300 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, one of the largest hurdles that modern society is going to have to overcome is the average person's understanding of large (or small) numbers and basic statistics. I think a large issue within that hurdle is that a lot of people simply won't want to learn, or apply the knowledge after learning.

And the funny thing is that the original commenter was looking at a trivial math problem. It wasn't even a question of statistical validity, it was just "What does it mean to compare percentages to each other?" That's grade-school mathematics. I see this kind of error pretty frequently, and it's usually not a failure of mathematics... Most often, the person has some pre-existing negative emotional reaction to the sta…

I think you might want to reconsider your opinion of others. I believe the OP was referring to this result being on the edge of statistical significance given: The effect size relative to the base population; The fact that many similar trials are performed and discarded with similar drugs; And as we see when looking deeper, there are other issues such as early stopping. It is not unreasonable to suspect the effect could disappear given more data.

Re: Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

#44

Post by _ywdj »

From my own experience I can very much believe an SSRI could have an effect on the immune system and/or the respiratory system.

I was a heavy cigarette smoker in my 20s, and over those years, I experienced worsening asthma and also worsening anxiety and depression.

Eventually I was prescribed an SSRI (Zoloft), and found that not only did my mood change, my asthma completely abated, even though I was still smoking just as much.

After a few months I decided I didn't like all that the SSRI was doing to my psyche, so when the prescription finished I tapered off it, and sure enough the asthma returned a few months later.

I've never enquired much as to what what was going on - I didn't speak to doctors or other people about it. But the correlation between SSRI intake and asthma abatement was very clear.

(And yes I know it was very stupid to be smoking as an asthmatic - I quit completely the following year and have stayed off them for coming-on 15 years. I've also been mostly asthma-free in that time, though it returned for a few months about 7 years ago, after a period of intense career-related stress, but then cleared up after I undertook some healing work that included both immune-system support and emotional healing.)

Re: Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

#45

Post by _huayra_ »

woodruffw wrote: post #10
fareesh wrote: post #7

I'll take my chances with the corona. Don't want SSRI

SSRIs are pretty serious, which is why you should probably just get vaccinated instead.

It's so strange how people are looking to truly foreign substances / drugs (from ivermectin to bleach to SSRIs now) compared to a vaccine, which is basically just a bunch of mRNA and a few preservatives.

That is, a bunch of stuff that is basically already floating around in our bodies / cells.

Re: Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

#46

Post by lettergram »

Glad to see this being spoken about! I’ve been assisting with data analysis for an eclectic group of people (who funded this study).

Been really disheartening to watch the politics around alternative treatments. Personally, I expect this to be attacked as well, but am hopeful! The stuff really does seem effective, particularly when combined with other drugs...

Re: Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

#47

Post by onion2k »

lettergram wrote: post #46

Glad to see this being spoken about! I’ve been assisting with data analysis for an eclectic group of people (who funded this study). Been really disheartening to watch the politics around alternative treatments. Personally, I expect this to be attacked as well, but am hopeful! The stuff really does seem effective, particularly when combined with other drugs...

I hope this isn't attacked, because this isn't an "alternative" drug.

Things move from "alternative medicine" to being "medicine" when people do good, peer-reviewed science to actually study the effects and find them to be effective. "Alternative medicine" like ivermectine or hydroxychloroquine have no scientific, properly studied basis for being used.

Re: Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

#48

Post by goldemerald »

darkerside wrote: post #23
SkittyDog wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as a matter of fact, it does demonstrate statistical significance.

For what minimum detectable effect?

You'd be interested in learning about the origin and application of Chi-Squared tests (or Fisher's exact test). Detecting changes in population means, and making sure those changes aren't just random noise, is quite straightforward and can be done by hand.

Re: Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

#49

Post by bpodgursky »

darkerside wrote: post #24
pertymcpert wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The results, published Wednesday in the journal Lancet Global Health, were so strong that independent experts monitoring the study recommended stopping it early because the results were clear.

> When the DSMC met on Aug 5, 2021, it recommended that the TOGETHER trial stop randomly assigning patients to the fluvoxamine group, as this comparison had met the prespecified superiority criterion for the primary endpoint (prespecified superiority threshold 97·6%). This... is not how it's supposed to work.

This is not uncommon or wrong.

Re: Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

#50

Post by bpodgursky »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #38
_3u10 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they were more interested in saving people's lives than waiting for the trial to conclude... I mean the downside is people are less depressed while on a ventilator.

No. It's called p-hacking, and it's a sleazy way to get published. https://youtu.be/42QuXLucH3Q

This is not p-hacking. p-hacking is when you don't pre-register your hypothesis and you hunt for ones which hit .05 after the fact.

There was a single hypothesis being tested here.

Post reply on HN