JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Caribbean for clinical trials on COVID-19

by

KEVON FELMINE
1910 days ago
20200430
Professor Terrence Seemungal

Professor Terrence Seemungal

KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Caribbean is­landers will be asked to par­tic­i­pate in a clin­i­cal study on four drugs that are hoped to be po­ten­tial treat­ments for COVID-19.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) will car­ry out the stud­ies at their cam­pus­es in T&T, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and the Ba­hamas once ap­proved.

An­nounc­ing the study at yes­ter­day's Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence, UWI's dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences Prof Ter­rence Seemu­gal said it will form part of the glob­al search for drugs that are ef­fec­tive against the virus. The study en­tails ad­min­is­ter­ing COVID-19 pa­tients with the med­ica­tion, Remde­si­var, Ri­ton­avir, In­ter­fer­on Be­ta and Hy­drox­y­chloro­quine. Re­searchers will com­pare pa­tients' re­ac­tion to the med­ica­tions to those who un­der the stan­dard care of­fered at hos­pi­tals.

"The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) came up with a study which they called Sol­i­dar­i­ty and this is a large in­ter­na­tion­al tri­al that will be look­ing at op­tions for ther­a­py. It is pro­posed that the study be done through­out the coun­tries which the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies are and that would be Trinidad, the Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica.

"We have a com­mit­tee across the four coun­tries that is chaired by one of our col­leagues, Prof Mar­vin Reid of the Mona Cam­pus," Seemu­n­gal said.

UWI sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als to the eth­ic com­mit­tees of the Min­istry of Health and the UWI. Once ap­proved, the com­mit­tee will es­tab­lish a date for the start of the tri­al. Seemu­n­gal said pa­tients will have the op­tion of en­rolling in the study and once they do, they will have to sign con­sent forms. The study would use the ran­domised process so pa­tients can­not de­ter­mine which course of drugs they pre­fer. As to the length of the study, Seemu­n­gal said it is based on the course of each pre­scrip­tion.

" So one will be about 10 days; an­oth­er one, about sev­en and an­oth­er one, about two weeks. It de­pends on which arm of the study you are in."

In re­cent me­dia con­fer­ences, Deyals­ingh re­spond­ed to ques­tions on drugs be­ing used to treat COVID-19 pa­tients in oth­er coun­tries, say­ing that these find­ings were anec­do­tal. Last month, he urged those who pur­chased the an­ti-malar­ia drugs chloro­quine and hy­drox­y­chloro­quine to re­turn it to the phar­ma­cies as they were not ap­proved for COVID-19 treat­ment. He added that lu­pus pa­tients need­ed them for treat­ment. On Mon­day, he told the Par­lia­ment that hy­drox­y­chloro­quine kills peo­ple. It was a drug tout­ed by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump as a po­ten­tial treat­ment but the US Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion cau­tioned against its use for COVID-19 out­side of the hos­pi­tal set­ting or a clin­i­cal tri­al due to risk of heart rhythm prob­lems. Seemu­gal said they have not found any re­li­able drugs so far.

While clin­i­cal tri­als are not 100 per cent safe, they are nec­es­sary for med­ical in­no­va­tion. Seemu­n­gal said it was im­por­tant to note the many times when drugs are used glob­al­ly, the stud­ies were not based on Caribbean pa­tients. There­fore, it is usu­al­ly un­known how lo­cals will re­act to them.

"We as­sume it is the same as those in the Amer­i­can coun­tries and Eu­rope where a lot of stud­ies are done. So this is a chance for us to be part of an in­ter­na­tion­al ap­proach to treat­ment. Will we get enough pa­tients in­volved in the study? Time will tell, but oth­er small­er stud­ies were done here in the Caribbean. We have had an en­roll­ment of pa­tients and it is up to the pub­lic to de­cide if some­one wish­es to take part. No one is go­ing to be forced to take part in any study."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored