The race against time continues. Contrary to what we sometimes hear, there are indeed treatments to fight Covid-19, the fruit of a year and a half of experience and clinical trials.
For example, for more than a year, corticosteroids such as dexamethasone have been shown to prevent a passage in intensive care in some patients. Soon, a study conducted by a dozen French hospitals will show the degree of effectiveness of a spray treatment for asthma, ciclesonide.
“It is almost impossible to find a 100% effective treatment against a virus, but this treatment could still be an excellent complement to the vaccination to fight against the epidemic”, underlines Michel Brazier, pharmacist at the hospital of Amiens .
“Covid insulin”
And treatment research continues, with, unfortunately, more or less financial means. However, the fifth wave of the Covid-19 epidemic is reviving the interest of ongoing clinical trials. There is one on which there is still much hope: beta interferons. “Covid insulin”, according to Professor Denis Malvy, infectious disease specialist at the Bordeaux hospital center.
The latter has been working for a few months, with his team, on the protective effect of this protein against respiratory diseases, such as those caused by the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus. His observation is shared by another team of scientists, based in Amiens, which is also looking at inhaled beta interferon.
The problem is that these two clinical trials, conducted in parallel, are having difficulty recruiting volunteers. “Fifty patients participated in the study, it would take a hundred more”, testifies Denis Malvy, in Bordeaux. While in Amiens, the number of volunteers is between 70 and 80, or about half of the patients needed to establish reliable data. And impossible to merge the two studies to reach the target faster.
To each his own protocol
“We didn’t start at the same time. This means that everyone has developed their own protocol for clinical trials, ”recognizes Michel Brazier, participant in the Amiens study, where treatment is given up to ten days after the appearance of the first signs and for patients under oxygen.
In Bordeaux, the choice fell on earlier treatment, applied on an outpatient basis, to be taken within five days of the first signs. “The reconciliation between the two studies will be possible and interesting, with the necessary precautions of interpretation, in the light of ethics and rigor”, underlines Denis Malvy.
“The fact of having two separate studies is also interesting because we will be able to know precisely when this treatment is the most effective”, pleads Michel Brazier. All that remains is to wait for the consolidated results of the two clinical trials. But not for a few months at the earliest.
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