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Covid-19: have we “prevented access to early treatment”, as Francis Lalanne asserts?


The question of treatment against Covid continues to be talked about. “I know doctors and I know, today, that the French were prevented from having access to early treatment” against the Covid-19, assured for example Tuesday Francis Lalanne on the plateau of Touche Pas à Mon Poste .

The singer, invited on the C8 show to defend his platform calling for a coup, wanted to discuss the management of the health crisis. The artist took advantage of this airtime to assert that we could “cure very quickly” of Covid-19 “from the first symptoms with drugs” such as hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin or ivermectin, “Which were proposed by the greatest virologists in the world, such as professors Raoult and Perrone”.

A theory also relayed several thousand times by Internet users arguing that the authorities would ignore effective remedies because they would be much less profitable than vaccines for pharmaceutical companies.

But, if “there is ongoing research, no drug has yet demonstrated a preventive effect on the coronavirus”, refutes Professor Yves Buisson, member of the Academy of Medicine. “If there was one, I can tell you that we would use it, we would talk about it, and the company that would produce it would not stand idly by,” adds the scientist.

Treatments whose effectiveness remains to be proven

In recent days, promising announcements concerning several treatments against Covid-19 have multiplied. Colchicine, an anti-inflammatory drug used against gout has been shown to be “clinically convincing” in preventing severe forms of Covid-19, the partial results of a Quebec study have advanced.

VIDEO. Coronavirus: colchicine, a promising drug in the fight against the epidemic?

But this work should be taken with caution, because the study in question has not yet been published, and will not be available for several weeks. In addition, the results “showing that colchicine reduces the risk of death or hospitalization of patients with Covid-19 by 21%” only approach “statistical significance” – the threshold allowing to consider that the link is proven and n is not just due to chance – without reaching it. The oral medication, whose side effects can be serious or even fatal, is therefore far from having been proven.

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Likewise, the efficacy of ivermectin, an antimalarial very similar to chloroquine and cited by Francis Lalanne, has not been proven. Australian researchers have indeed observed encouraging effects “in vitro”, in the laboratory, but Professor Buisson recalls that this does not mean that a drug also works “in vivo”, that is to say in a living organism.

This is what happened in the case of hydroxychloroquine. Brought as a miracle solution by Professor Raoult, the molecule, whose effectiveness is still not proven against Covid-19, has fallen back into disgrace, urging scientists to be cautious. Contrary to what Youtubeur Silvano Trotta says, there is no proof that ivermectin, even combined with other molecules such as “doxycline and zinc”, gives “100% cure for Covid”.

Mentioned by the singer, azithromycin, an antibiotic whose only data relate to patients also treated with hydroxychloroquine, has similarly “shown activity on certain viruses in vitro” without scientifically proving its benefits for patients with Covid- 19, recalls the French Society of Pharmacology on his site.

As for vitamin D, the prescription of which was recommended by 73 “French-speaking experts” as soon as the Covid-19 was diagnosed in an article published on January 8, no study provides direct evidence of its benefits. “People with third-party infections or severe forms of Covid more often have a vitamin D deficiency. But the converse is not true,” recalled immuno-oncology researcher Eric Billy. We will therefore have to wait for the results of the ongoing “large-scale” clinical trials, one of which, classified as “national priority”, is currently coordinated by the Angers University Hospital. The European clinical trial Discovery, on the other hand, which conducts trials on drugs against Covid-19, recently “stopped testing remdesivir”, an antiviral treatment initially considered promising, Wednesday, “for lack of evidence of its effectiveness”.

In summary, if none of these early treatments is used today in France, it is because they are still in the trial phase or because they have not proved to be significantly effective for patients infected with the new coronavirus.

Promising synthetic antibodies

“In addition to the deployment of vaccines, it remains essential to find new drugs and to provide solid evidence of their effectiveness on patients affected by Covid-19,” however, Inserm reaffirmed on Wednesday. And hopes are now turning to a combination of two so-called “monoclonal” synthetic antibodies, tested as part of the Discovery trial.

This experimental cocktail, in particular administered to former US President Donald Trump when he caught the Covid-19 was ordered in large quantities in January by Germany. In particular produced by Regeneron and Eli Lilly laboratories, it is recommended for people who have developed mild or moderate symptoms of the disease and who are at significant risk of developing a severe form of Covid. This can, for example, concern overweight, diabetic or hypertensive patients. But this treatment is very expensive: nearly 200 euros per dose. “There is no question of giving it to everyone because we would not have the means and we do not yet know when to administer it to patients”, specifies Professor Buisson.

Apart from corticosteroids such as dexamethasone, recommended for patients with severe disease, no treatment has therefore been proven in the case of mild forms of Covid-19. While waiting for the final results of clinical trials on these drugs, “the only early treatment that works is vaccination”, recalled Doctor Jimmy Mohamed. No offense to Francis Lalanne.

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