The independent committee responsible for analyzing the European clinical trial Discovery believes that there are still no results on the effectiveness of the four drugs tested against Covid-19, said Thursday one of the researchers who oversee the project at Inserm.
"They told us we should keep going" to include new patients in the study, said Yazdan Yazdanpanah, director of infectious diseases at the research institute, about the panel of experts that met on Monday to analyze the data from this European trial.
Launched on March 22, this pilot study from Lyon is to test the effectiveness of four treatments on hospitalized and seriously ill Covid-19 patients: the antiviral remdesivir, the combination lopinavir / ritonavir, a combination of these two antiretrovirals with interferon beta, and finally hydroxychloroquine, derived from the antimalarial chloroquine.
Fewer patients than expected
Discovery had 750 patients included on Wednesday, Inserm said. The study initially targeted 3,200 patients in Europe, including at least 800 in France, but the cooperation process with other European countries took longer than expected due to "regulatory difficulties", explained last week Florence Ader, infectious disease specialist at the Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL), which is piloting the project.
If the experts recommend continuing, this means that "they consider that there is no toxicity problem, that they do not see any major efficacy, but that they believe that by including (more patients), maybe we can try to show effectiveness, ”said Professor Yazdanpanah.
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