Artemisinin better than hydroxychloroquine in treating covid 19? | 青蒿素在治療covid 19方面優於羥氯喹？

Saturday 09/11/2021 (jkzx.com, healthabc.com) — Artemisinin is an antimalarial medication that is commonly used in African countries where the covid 19 infection rate and death rate are much lower than those in the West where this drug is rarely used.

A new Chinese study led by Jianping Song and his team suggests that Artemisinin can be part of the reason why African people are less likely to get covid 19 and after getting it, it is less likely for them to die. Other similar antimalarial medications such as ivermectin which is also used in Africa may also play a role.

The study tested a treatment based on artemisinin/piperaquine for its efficacy at cleaning the viral load in covid 19 patients. Short resident time means less damage caused to the body. Another treatment based hydroxychloroquinine/arbidol which is recommended in China’s Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Diagnosis and Treatment Plan (Trial Seventh Edition). This treatment was used as the control.

As a result, a signifcant difference in lowering covid 19 viral load was found in the study of 47 adult patients with mild to moderate severity of covid 19 infection (mostly female patients who tend to show milder symptoms than men after covid 19 infection).

Specifically, those who took the artemisinin/piperaquine treatment by day 11 had their covid 19 viral RNA lowered to an undetectable level. In comparison, it took 19 days for those who took the hydroxychloroquine/arbidol treatment to clear covid 19 virus.

(This study shows that it takes a long time for patients to clear SARS CoV-2 virus. So even after the patients become asymptomatic, they may also be contagious and may be able to spread the covid 19 through close contact.)

The study treatment is as follows:

AP (ARTEPHARM Co., Ltd.) was used as an antiviral and symptomatic treatment. AP was orally administrated with a loading dose of two tablets (artemisinin 125 mg and piperaquine 750 mg) for the first day and followed by a maintenance dose of one tablet/day (artemisinin 62.5 mg and piperaquine 375 mg) for the next six days. The total dose was eight tablets in seven days.

Some patients in both groups took some other treatments, but the authors of the study consider those insignificant. They conclude that using Artemisinin/piperaquine can shorten the recovery time period.

For the safety of the treatment, the authors suggest that QT interval and cardiac arrhythmias should be monitored during the treatment. Some patients developed prolonged CQ intervals even though returning to normal after stopage of the treatment. (more patients in the study group experienced prolonged QT interval than the control group).

Ivermectin, similar to Artemisinin, is another antiparasitic medication that when used as a preventative, this drug can reduce the incidence of covid 19 by 86%.

2021 年 9 月 11 日星期六（jkzx.com、Healthabc.com）——青蒿素是一種抗瘧疾藥物，常用於非洲國家，這些國家的 covid 19 感染率和死亡率遠低於西方國家很少使用這種藥物的地方。

由宋建平和他的團隊領導的一項新的中國研究表明，青蒿素可能是非洲人不太可能感染 covid 19 並且感染後他們不太可能死亡的部分原因。其他類似的抗瘧藥物，如也在非洲使用的伊維菌素，也可能發揮作用。

該研究測試了一種基於青蒿素/哌喹的治療方法在清除 COVID 19 患者的病毒載量方面的功效。停留時間短意味著對身體造成的傷害更小。 《中國新型冠狀病毒肺炎診療方案（試行第七版）》推薦的另一種基於羥氯奎寧/阿比多爾的治療方案。該處理用作對照。

因此，在對 47 名患有輕度至中度 covid 19 感染的成年患者的研究中發現，在降低 covid 19 病毒載量方面存在顯著差異（大多數女性患者在 covid 19 感染後往往表現出比男性更輕的症狀）。

具體來說，那些在第 11 天接受青蒿素/哌喹治療的人的 covid 19 病毒 RNA 降低到無法檢測到的水平。相比之下，接受羥氯喹/阿比多爾治療的人需要 19 天才能清除 covid 19 病毒。

（這項研究表明，患者清除 SARS CoV-2 病毒需要很長時間。因此，即使在患者無症狀後，他們也可能具有傳染性，並可能通過密切接觸傳播 covid 19。）

研究治療如下：

AP（ARTEPHARM Co., Ltd.）被用作抗病毒和對症治療。 AP 在第一天以兩片負荷劑量（青蒿素 125 毫克和哌喹 750 毫克）口服給藥，然後在接下來的六天內以一片/天（青蒿素 62.5 毫克和哌喹 375 毫克）的維持劑量給藥。總劑量為 7 天八片。

兩組中的一些患者接受了一些其他治療，但該研究的作者認為這些無關緊要。他們得出結論，使用青蒿素/哌喹可以縮短恢復時間。

為了治療的安全性，作者建議在治療過程中應監測QT間期和心律失常。一些患者即使在停止治療後恢復正常，也出現了延長的 CQ 間期。 （研究組的 QT 間期延長的患者多於對照組）。