Add on to Azythromycine, Phytomedicine and/or Antimalarial Drug vs Hydroxychloroquine in Uncomplicated COVID-19 Patients

Overview

The phase II clinical trial, with three arms and at rate of 10 patients per arm, received the approval of the National Committee for Ethics and Health Research. This is a non inferiority test aimed to compare the efficacy and safety in add on to Azithromycin, an antimalarial drug, a treatment combination of the antimalrial drug with an antiviral phytomedicine versus Hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients without complications. During the treatment, viral clearance, adverse effects related to treatment, and symptoms progression will be assessed on days 3, 6 and 14. Clinical, paraclinical and laboratory tests will be performed throughout the 3-month trial. Ethical and deontological considerations will be applied.

The patient who has signed the informed consent for participation in the study will be immediately taken care of by the investigating clinicians. The clinician will determine the history of the disease and identify any clinical signs shown by the patient. Clinical data will be recorded in the patient's medical file. At the end of the clinical examination, the investigating clinician will draw up the report of the biological examinations. Laboratory examinations will be carried out according to the procedures and method by accredited laboratories in Guinea (National Institute of Public Health; Hemorrhagic Fevers Laboratory; CREMS - Kindia Laboratory; Institut Pasteur de Guinée) for the diagnosis of COVID19. After inclusion, patients are assigned by randomization into separate treatment arms with 10 patients per arm. They remain in these treatment arms for the duration of the trial, analysis, and follow-up activities. A random sequence will be generated and implemented so as to randomize. The treatments will be made available to investigative clinicians by the Institute for Research and Development of Medicinal and Food Plants of Guinea. All subjects meeting the inclusion criteria will benefit from an individual file which will include data relating to general information, the complete clinical examination and the paraclinical examination. The data will be coded, entered and processed using statistical software. Data entry quality control will be performed on all files. The selected patients are distributed randomly into 3 parallel arms, each arm having a different treatment modality. A homogeneity test on the main socio-demographic variables (age, sex, weight, hemoglobin level, etc.) will be carried out between the different treatment arms before any specific analysis. Baseline characteristics and treatment of subjects in arms 1, 2 and 3 will be presented as medians, ranges for all parameters such as clinical, anthropometric, biochemical values and as percentages or numbers for symptoms. The comparison between the three cohorts will be made using either the Anova test for continuous variables or the chi2 test for categorical variables. The rate of change over time of virologic clearance, fever and other symptom values as well as the differences for these rates between treatment arms will be tested using mixed-effects modeling. The duration of the trial is 20 days for each patient recruited. In anticipation of future analyzes, the biological samples will be kept at the biobank of the National Institute of Public Health of Guinea.