ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic that is currently raging in the world caused, together with quarantine restrictions and other measures to combat it, significant distress in the human population. This distress has led to a sharp increase in the incidence of mental disorders in the population, especially of depressive, anxiety and stress-related disorders. This increase in psychiatric morbidity, in turn, significantly increased the number of people needing to take certain psychotropic drugs. On the other hand, the current lack of effective specific agents for the treatment of COVID-19 infection also posed the task of finding potential candidates for repositioning of a new indication (treatment of this new infection) among already registered drugs. Among the drugs screened for potential efficacy against the new SARS-CoV-2 virus, thousands of drugs which are currently registered in the world, of course, there are many psychotropic drugs. Some of them actually turned out to be promising candidates for such repositioning. In this brief review, we show that several classes of psychotropic drugs can be potential candidates for repositioning for the treatment of COVID-19: ligands of sigma-1 and sigma-2 receptors (primarily fluvoxamine, but possibly others, including the innovative Russian anxiolytic fabomotizole (Afobazole), melatonergic agonists (exogenous melatonin and possibly also agomelatine (Valdoxan) and, again, fabomotizole (Afobazole)), as well as peptide bioregulators with nootropic, antidepressant, anti-anxiety, anti-stress and immunomodulatory properties (Noopept, Selang). Copyright © 2021 Izdatel'stvo Meditsina. All rights reserved.