Home » Health » “If this study is confirmed, it is a very good news”

“If this study is confirmed, it is a very good news”

Jean-Daniel Lelièvre, head of the department of infectious diseases at the Hospital Henri Mondor, considers “interesting” the first results of the study Recovery, which establishes that dexamethasone, a steroid, reduced by one-third the mortality rate among seriously ill patients for the coronavirus.

Dexamethasone, a drug of the family of steroids, reduce by one third the mortality in patients severely infected by the coronavirus Covid-19, according to results published Tuesday in a part of the clinical trial English Recovery. “It is still only a press release with results which seem interesting”, said Wednesday, June 17, on franceinfo Jean-Daniel Lelièvre, head of the department of infectious diseases at the Hospital Henri Mondor. But “if this study is confirmed, it is a very good news.”

franceinfo : What does this study ?

Jean-Daniel Lelievre : This study was conducted on more than 10,000 people in the United Kingdom. On these 10 000 people, over 2 000 have received the dexamethasone is cortisone. Studies show that for the case in faitplus serious, people who needed to be ventilated, there is a one third reduction in mortality. Unless the cases are severe the less the effect is important.

This drug was already used for similar cases in Covid ?

It is a drug for which we already had retrospective effects, because in other cases of acute respiratory distress we know that this drug may have efficacy. In the case of influenza, it tends to worsen, but in cases that resemble the Covid it had already given. On the retrospective studies it was felt that there was a high degree of effectiveness. It is a drug that is very old, it is cortisone that many patients are aware, which is easy to access and available in all countries. Therefore, if this study is confirmed, it is a very good news.

Studies have already been carried out on many patients with other medications. That is what changed on this study ?

Attention, it is still only a press release with results which seem interesting. It is necessary to see the full study before you really declare victory. What changes in relation to the study of the Lancetit is that it is a retrospective study, that is to say that it has been analyzed all the people who took the drug and you see if has an efficiency. Here it is a randomized trial, that is to say that when we are going to give a treatment, it really compares people in terms of severity, sex, age. Therefore, it is sure that, in the end what we measure is the effectiveness of the treatment. Compared to the professor Raoult, he had shown effectiveness, but there was no control group therefore it is not known if the people who did not take hydroxychloroquine would have had the same evolution.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.