March 20, 2020

expert comment about chloroquine and anti-virals, in relation to COVID-19

The drug chloroquine, and some anti-virals, have been mentioned as possible treatments for COVID-19.

Prof Trudie Lang, Director of The Global Health Network, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, said:

“In order to know what therapies could work to treat the viral infection we need to undertake clinical trials to gain the full evidence to know whether they work or not.  Typically anti-virals need to be given very early in the infection because they are most effective given before or at the point of viral replication in a patient.  The challenge we have here is that many people are asymptomatic or have few symptoms and so we need to learn more, through clinical trials, about when to give an anti-viral in the course of the infection, who would benefit most and whether it would work in clearing the virus from the patient, and do so safely.  And the main question of course is finding a drug that could treat COVID-19.  The fastest approach to this it to test existing drugs that are used for other infections, and this is happening rapidly across the globe.

“Please see this link (https://coronavirus.tghn.org/implementing-research/open-working-groups/) and scroll to the bottom of the page for a summary table.  Trials are being set up, or are already running, to test potential drugs that might clear the virus, and others are looking at different approaches to supportive respiratory care for those who are severely ill with the latter stages of this disease with pulmonary complications.  So these are very different types of trials.  In regard to the anti-viral therapies, this would likely be of most use in early infection and here many research teams are looking to undertake trials of existing drugs that have shown efficacy in the laboratory or in animals against COVID19.  We can take these existing drugs straight into human trials as we already know they are safe.  However, trials must happen and these are carefully designed and controlled scientific experiments that are the best way to determine whether these work or not.

“Donald Trump’s comment on making Chloroquine available was unhelpful because we do not yet know if it works and using it unproven in this setting could actually slow our ability to answer that question as it would be outside of a research framework, where we can compare different drugs and answer this critical question as quickly, accurately, ethically and safely as possible.”

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.