Some years ago, Dr Chia tried fluoxetine (Prozac) for his enterovirus ME/CFS patients, but I have heard not any reports of success.
On this forum,
@JES tried Prozac as an enterovirus antiviral, but did not see benefits.
According to
some calculations I did, when you take fluoxetine, the blood levels of fluoxetine achieved are not high enough to have any significant antiviral effect.
In the brain though, there may be some mild antiviral effects, as over a few months of oral dosing, fluoxetine accumulates in the brain tissues to high levels, and there have been some published case studies of fluoxetine being use to treat acute enterovirus brain infections with success.
In ME/CFS though we are not dealing with acute enterovirus infection, but a chronic non-cytolytic enterovirus infection, which is a different mode of infection (non-cytolytic infections live
inside human cells).
I compiled a list of drugs and supplements which are antiviral in vitro for enterovirus
here.
Unfortunately, according to calculations I performed, none of these will actually have any significant antiviral effect in vivo, because when you take these substances, sufficiently high blood levels cannot be achieved.
In vitro studies often use high concentrations of the substance, but in vivo it is often not possible to match those high concentrations in the blood, so for practical purposes, these substances in my list are not effective antivirals in vivo, unfortunately.
I was really hoping to find some supplement or off-label drug that would work for enterovirus in vivo, but alas I could not really identify one.
The only substances that my calculations suggest could have some mild antiviral effects for enterovirus are:
black soybean (Glycine max) at high doses, but when I tried this, it increased brain fog and mental vagueness, so I stopped.
The drug
Arbidol might be effective for enterovirus, and
one person on this forum tried it, seeing perhaps some mild benefits.
Low-dose oral interferon might also be worth trying for enterovirus; one case of full remission from ME/CFS from low-dose oral interferon is detailed in
this thread. I have not yet tried this properly.
