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Marcos Pontes, Minister of Science and Technology (Credit: Reproduction TV Brasil)
Despite reducing the viral load in patients with Covid-19, the vermifuge nitazoxanide is not effective in resolving the symptoms of the disease after five days of treatment, nor can it prevent complications derived from coronavirus infection, but it has been shown to be beneficial symptoms after seven days of follow-up.
The conclusions are in an article that brings the complete data of the study financed by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations (MCTI), whose partial results were presented at a ceremony at the Planalto Palace that generated controversy on Monday.
At the time, the federal government used a bar graph taken from an image bank, not based on actual research data, to illustrate the drug’s effectiveness. In the video presenting the conclusion of the study, a narrator states, at the same time that the graph is shown, that “the result scientifically demonstrated the effectiveness of the drug in reducing viral load in the early stage of the disease.”
On the date of the event, Minister Marcos Pontes justified that the complete study was not presented, since the data had to be unpublished for publication in a scientific journal.
The complete data were published yesterday, on the medRxiv platform, which brings together articles in a pre-printed version, that is, they have not yet been published in scientific journals or have been reviewed by other researchers.
According to information in the article, 392 patients participated in the study, of whom 194 took nitazoxanide for five days and 198 received placebo. Only patients with mild conditions were included in the investigation, even in the first five days of symptoms.
After five days of treatment, the number of patients who still had symptoms was similar in both groups: both the medicated and the placebo, indicating that the administration of the drug made no difference. This was the so-called “primary outcome” assessed in the study, that is, the main follow-up indicator, in which the medication failed.
At follow-up after one week, considered a ‘secondary outcome’, the percentage of patients reporting complete resolution of symptoms was 78% in the nitazoxanide group and 57% in the placebo group, which, according to the authors, it represents a statistically significant difference.
The rate of patients who had a negative CRP test after seven days was also higher among the medicated group: 29.9% compared to 18.2%. There were no significant differences in the occurrence of adverse events between the two groups.
However, the drug failed to reduce hospitalizations for the disease. According to the article, ten people were hospitalized for worsening conditions, five from each study group. In the nitazoxanide group, two patients had to be transferred to the ICU.
“What was achieved was a secondary benefit, of reducing viral load, but that does not mean that there was a decrease in transmission because that is not what the study set out to evaluate”, says Alexandre Naime Barbosa, head of infectology at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) and consultant for the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases (SBI), a specialist who did not participate in the study.
For the infectious disease Raquel Stucchi, professor at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), the previous negative PCR can have a positive effect if it reduces the time that the patient transmits the virus, but more studies are needed.
The information is from the newspaper The State of S. Paulo.
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