President Donald Trump ad Thursday that Office of Food and Drug Administration ( Fda for its acronym in English) works on a preventive treatment against coronavirus from antimalarial medicine.
–
Trump said at the White House that the drug called hydrochlorine, whose use as part of a treatment for covid-19 is still in the experimental phase, may soon be available and supplied by prescription.
–
“It has shown very promising initial results. We will be able to have that drug available almost immediately,” Trump said. “This is where the FDA has been fantastic. They have gone through the approval process and it has been approved. They reduced (the process) from many months to now.”
–
FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn explained that since January they have been testing various treatments, including the one involving hydrochlorine, and offered more accurate time estimates than those presented by the president.
–
“We are analyzing everything that may be on the table as treatment,” Hahn said, accompanying Trump in his message to reporters and clarifying that a treatment for the disease would take at least six months to develop, while experimental tests to a vaccine would take up to a year to start.
–
The hydrochlorine, referred to by the president and his response team for the crisis caused by the pandemic, was approved by the FDA in 1955 for the prevention and treatment of malaria under the brand name Plaquenil.
–
Trump made the announcement two days after the University of Minnesota reported the start of the first clinical trial to determine if the coronavirus can be prevented with hydrochlorine, which has been shown “active in a laboratory setting against the novel SAS-CoV2 virus. “(other acronyms to identify covid-19).
–
There is currently no vaccine to prevent covid-19 respiratory diseases caused by the coronavirus.
–
The clinical trial involves 1,500 people who have been exposed to a carrier of the virus but have no symptoms. Half of the sample will receive hydrochlorine and the other half a vitamin.
–
Dr. David Boulware, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, said the clinical trial he leads “can become the world standard for helping prevent disease in healthcare personnel and exposed people.”
–
Boulware noted that a five-day hydrocholine treatment would cost about $ 12.
–
The low cost and certainty that its use has provided for decades makes drugs already known as a quick, safe and low-cost alternative to find a cure.
–
Forbes magazine indicates that specialists have adopted medicines for leprosy and alcoholism to treat another global epidemic: the so-called flea-transmitted Lyme disease that causes joint pain and nervous system disorders.
–
The Reuters agency reported that China, Australia and France are also conducting experiments with hydrochlorine because, in addition to having an antiviral effect, it stops the production and distribution of proteins involved in the inflammatory complications of various viral diseases.
–
Janet Díaz, director of clinical management for the World Health Organization, said last month at a press conference that the effectiveness of hydrochlorine had not yet been demonstrated. He added that other experiments evaluate the effectiveness of lopinavir and ritonavir, two drugs used for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
–
The University of Minnesota also started another experiment this week with 200 people using losartan, a blood pressure medication.
–
Additionally, the University of Nebraska Medical Center last month began the first clinical trial in the United States to evaluate an experimental treatment for diseases caused by coronavirus.
–
The study, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), evaluates the efficacy of the antiviral remdevisir, previously used to treat the Ebola virus in humans, the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS for its in animals), and severe respiratory disease syndrome (SARS).
–
By Thursday, March 19, it was estimated that at least 220,000 people had been infected and almost 10,000 had died around the planet. In the United States, cases exceeded 10,700, including 160 deaths.
–
