Professor Didier Raoult has published a new study demonstrating, according to him, the effectiveness of chloroquine to treat the coronavirus, which is also much debated in the scientific community. He claims that this treatment would help reduce the viral load of patients, and therefore make them less contagious.

Didier Raoult persists and signs. The director of the IHU of Marseille published Friday the results of a new study conducted by him on the use of hydroxychloroquine against the coronavirus. While the use of this antimalarial is widely debated within the scientific community, assures him that these new data confirm its effectiveness.

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Drop patients' viral load

This new study would show in particular that chloroquine associated with another molecule would make it possible to drop the viral load of the patients, ie to make them less contagious. If this result is proven, it would be a great asset to curb the spread of the epidemic and reduce the pressure on hospitals.

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But there are still many gray areas. Professor Raoult's team does not seem to use "group control" (a group of sick people who take no treatment, or to whom researchers administer a placebo) to conduct its research. What is fundamental in this kind of statistical studies, because it allows to check the reaction of people testing the drug compared to others.

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An international study in progress

Of the 81 patients included in this study, 80 people are recovering, and an 86-year-old patient has died. Results that are not far from the overall statistics known to date for the disease. Statistics which can however only be confirmed by the current international study on a much larger number of patients.