Doctors want to test malaria drugs against Covid-19

Lisa Vogel studied departmental journalism with a focus on medicine and biosciences at Ansbach University and deepened her journalistic knowledge in the master's degree in multimedia information and communication. This was followed by a traineeship in the editorial team. Since September 2020 she has been writing as a freelance journalist for

More posts by Lisa Vogel All content is checked by medical journalists.

The Tübingen Institute for Tropical Medicine wants to test the malaria drug chloroquine in the fight against corona diseases on people.

As institute director Peter Kremsner announced on Wednesday, a study on humans is to begin in the coming week.

Experiments in the test tube showed an effect

According to Kremsner, chloroquine has long been on the market as an anti-malarial agent. But it also works against many viruses - including Sars-CoV-2, as at least tests in the test tube have shown. According to Kremsner, a large number of Covid 19 patients have been treated with chloroquine in China and Italy. It is unclear, however, whether with success, since the sick had received chloroquine in some cases in very high doses and together with many other drugs. "It can also be that it does not work or even does harm," said Kremsner.

Test on patients with mild symptoms

The tropical medicine specialists in Tübingen want to use chloroquine to treat a test group with moderate Covid-19 disease and to give placebos to a control group. The application for the study should be submitted to the Tübingen ethics committee on Wednesday.

Medicines are only ever approved for certain diseases. The Bonn Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArm) is responsible for this. Doctors can only give them to individual patients in exceptional cases, e.g.when no effective approved medication is available. (lv / dpa)

Tags:  drugs smoking womenshealth