To treat patients with COVID-19 Europe begins to experiment with medicines such as chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.
Europe have tested at least 3200 patients in Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, UK, France and Spain. It was in France It was in this last place where the first tests were carried out with 800 patients during the third week of March.
The tests include antiviral medicine used to treat Ebola (Remdesivir), HIV (Lopinavir), and malaria (hydroxychloroquine); the last one is also used to treat diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus.
Infectious disease specialist Florence Ader, who works at a hospital in Lyon, France, is leading the trials in her country. He believes that experimental treatments that are not effective will be abandoned and replaced by others that arise during the investigation.
That means that, as well as these medications, other alternatives for COVID-19 treatment may emerge.
For the nonce, the tests with hydroxychloroquine have been successful, as published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Agents: (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300996?via%3Dihub#!), it was applied in 24 patients and showed a reduction or disappearance of the virus in 75%.
This is a small sample; however, favorable results will give entry to future applications and research.
