The encouragement is presidential: Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron affirmed that Pr Didier Raoult was "a great scientist" and that his dual therapy "should be tested" to prove its effectiveness or not against the coronavirus, and of a possible toxicity. At the IHU-Méditerranée in Marseille, Didier Raoult advocates therapy with two drugs, hence the name dual therapy.
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For the time being, only one study in France has been testing the famous dual therapy at the Montpellier CHU for five days, with two drugs: hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, which are the drugs that Professor Didier Raoult promotes. In Montpellier, these drugs are tested in a clinical trial on patients with declared pneumonia, but still at an early stage of the coronavirus.
What advantages over monotherapy?
After weeks of controversy, Professor Jacques Reynes wanted to verify this synergy of molecules of which Professor Didier Raoult speaks: "If we document the fact that dual therapy has advantages over monotherapy without problematic cardiological inconvenience, we will rather be tempted to propose dual therapy ", he explains at the microphone of Europe 1." On the other hand, if monotherapy works as well as dual therapy, we can ask ourselves questions about the real interest of adding azithromycin. seems to be useful to have this answer in the future. "
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At the Montpellier University Hospital, patients treated as part of this study are closely monitored by electrocardiogram. The results should be known within two months.
In all the other clinical trials carried out in France, we test either hydroxychrloroquine or azithromycin, but not together. Why ? Mainly because the WHO does not recommend it since, in the test tube, azithromycin does not give a convincing result and there are cardiac side effects which can be added to those of hydroxychloroquine.