Marseille (AFP)
A common treatment with chloroquine, a drug commonly used against malaria, has shown signs of effectiveness against the coronavirus, Didier Raoult, director of the Mediterranean Infection Institute in Marseille, told AFP on Tuesday, relying on the results of a Chinese clinical study.
"We already knew that chloroquine was effective in vitro against this new coronavirus and the clinical evaluation made in China confirmed it," explains Professor Raoult, renowned specialist in infectious diseases, commenting on the first publication on this clinical study of three Chinese researchers in the journal BioScience Trends.
"Ultimately, this infection is perhaps the simplest and cheapest to treat of all viral infections", adds the director of this hospital-university institute very involved in the detection of the new coronavirus in France.
The article published online on February 19 draws its results from a clinical trial conducted in more than ten Chinese hospitals (in Wuhan - epicenter of the epidemic -, Beijing and Shanghai in particular) to measure "the effectiveness of chloroquine on treatment of pneumonia associated with Covid-19 ".
"The results obtained so far on more than 100 patients have shown that chloroquine phosphate was more effective than the treatment received by the comparison group in containing the progression of pneumonia, in improving the state of the lungs, in the patient becomes negative again for the virus and to shorten the duration of the disease ", specify the Chinese researchers.
The short study does not, however, quantify this difference in effectiveness.
"The antiviral and anti-inflammatory capacities of chloroquine could play a role in its potential effectiveness in treating patients suffering from pneumonia caused by Covid-19", continues the article on the study carried out by professors Jianjun Gao, Zhenxue Tian and Xu Yang, from Qingdao University and Qingdao Hospital.
News all the more interesting that "chloroquine is an inexpensive and safe drug, used for over 70 years," insists the article.
According to Chinese researchers, a treatment of 500 mg of chloroquine per day for ten days would be sufficient.
"This is extraordinary news, this treatment which costs nothing," insisted Professor Raoult to AFP, welcoming the work of Chinese researchers to find an effective drug, a path he believes should be preferred rather than research. a vaccine that might not be available anyway for long months anyway.
Asked about BFMTV from Rome on this treatment, the French Minister of Health Olivier Véran assured having met several times with Didier Raoult: "He told me about his observations and the studies he highlighted, that I sent back to the Directorate General for Health, which is in the process of doing all the analyzes. "
"We know that there are indeed interesting studies on an impact in vitro but the studies on the patient have yet to be determined," said the minister.
© 2020 AFP