To treat Covid-19, a clinical trial of 700 patients is currently being carried out on a promising molecule, produced naturally by the immune system: interferon.

Researchers are trying to determine whether the drop in the quantity of these molecules in the body caused by the disease can be compensated for by a drug. 

A molecule that could be very promising for defeating the Covid.

If the government is banking on vaccination to slow the epidemic, the health authorities do not despair of finding a treatment against Sars-Cov-2 in order to limit these serious forms.

Interferon is currently the subject of clinical trials, mentioned by the Minister of Health Olivier Véran last February.

This medicine has been used for a long time against hepatitis C or multiple sclerosis.

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Interferon is a protein naturally produced by our body and more specifically by the cells of our immune system.

However, the researchers noticed that the amount of interferon in the body of Covid patients fell sharply.

An even more notable fall in patients with comorbidities, that is to say those at risk of developing a severe form of the disease.

This observation was the basis of an idea: to compensate for this drop in interferon with a drug.

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One trial on 700 patients

"The objective is to assess whether a substitution provided by exogenously interferon, provided very early in the disease, can allow the body to control the infection and prevent that, in people At risk, the disease progresses to the inflammatory phase, which is all the seriousness of the picture ", specifies Denis Malvy, infectious disease specialist at Bordeaux University Hospital and member of the scientific council, who coordinates this Coverage clinical trial. 

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If the results are confirmed, this treatment could reduce the number of hospitalizations.

From the onset of Covid symptoms, the 700 patients included in this trial will have to take an aerosol for ten minutes each day, for a week.

No need, therefore, to stay in the hospital.

A treatment all the more interesting because it is not very expensive: between 150 and 250 euros per patient.