ANALYSIS
Scientists and doctors around the world are working to find a cure for the coronavirus. A drug, chloroquine, has great hopes for some of the medical teams. Professor Raoult, in Marseille, has been advocating the use of this antimalarial for weeks. He has even started to prescribe it to all patients suffering from Covid-19 and who demand it, even if it means getting the wrath of his colleagues.
Because many infectious disease specialists dispute the efficacy of chloroquine and demand further studies before considering large-scale tests. Monday evening, the High Council of Public Health even recommended not to use it, except for severe forms, said Olivier Véran.
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Professor Raoult's study deemed insufficient
The use of chloroquine has certainly worked on certain patients. Professor Raoult carried out a study on 24 people with coronavirus, to whom he prescribed a derivative of chloroquine, hydroxyl-chloroquine, combined with an antibiotic. After six days, three-quarters of them had no virus in the nose or in the mouth.
But this study is considered insufficient and even questionable by many infectious disease specialists, because of the small number of participants, but also because it does not demonstrate that the patients are necessarily better. Just because the viral load disappears from the nose and mouth doesn't mean it also disappears from the lungs, say pharmacologists.
WHO warns
The World Health Organization itself condemned the administration of drugs to infected patients on Monday evening before the scientific community agreed on their effectiveness. She also warned of the "false hopes" they might arouse.
Vincent Enouf, deputy director of the national reference center for respiratory viruses at the Pasteur Institute, recalled Monday afternoon on Europe 1 that chloroquine had already been tested, without success, on patients suffering from Sars, the coronavirus which had caused the deaths of several hundred people in China in 2002-2003. "Tests were carried out in vitro, and we saw an effect. But unfortunately, the tests carried out in vivo (on the patients) during SARS, in 2003, did not have reasonable effects", he explains .
"Today, tests must be carried out to verify the in vitro tests, which will make it possible to identify or not a molecule making it possible to lower the viral load in infected patients", he recommends. "There are rules and times for everything, which as many people as possible try to follow," adds Vincent Enouf. Clinical trials on four drugs, including chloroquine, have just been launched at European level. Their results are expected in the coming weeks.
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Undesirable effects
Chloroquine also has side effects, which have been known for a long time. There are risks of heart problems, and long-term for the eyes. But an experienced infectious disease specialist, interviewed by Europe 1, assures that if chloroquine is used with caution by a doctor, like Professor Raoult, patients are not necessarily in danger.
He adds that there is little risk of using it before the results of official studies, which will fall in two weeks or three weeks. But for this infectious disease specialist, if chloroquine is not used and the health authorities conclude that it is effective, then we will have the right to have regrets.
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