According to the new French rules, hydroxychloroquine can only be used in clinical trials.
Paris:
The French government on Wednesday banned the treatment of COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine, a controversial and potentially harmful drug that US President Donald Trump said he took as a preventive measure.
The move comes after two French advisory bodies and the World Health Organization warned this week that the drug – a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and lupus – has been shown to be potentially dangerous in several studies.
The urgency of the coronavirus epidemic prompted some doctors to prescribe the drug despite a lack of research to demonstrate its effectiveness against the new coronavirus.
Among them, a French infectious disease specialist who caught Trump’s ear, who stunned his own administration last week by revealing that he was taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive against COVID-19.
According to the new French rules, the drug can only be used in clinical trials to test its effectiveness against the coronavirus – which does not allow to know if the French doctor, Didier Raoult, could continue to use it in his hospital. Marseille in the south.
Raoult previously rejected an extensive study published last week in the medical journal The Lancet, which found that administration of hydroxychloroquine or its associated chloroquine actually increased the risk of death for many patients.
Hydroxychloroquine, also used to treat malaria, is sold under the brand name Plaquenil by the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, which has promised to offer governments millions of doses if studies prove that it can be used safely in the fight against coronaviruses.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
