Posted on 04/16/2020 8:03:10 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A just-reported Chinese study compares the clinical outcomes of COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine with those of patients receiving standard of care. The results, alas, are disappointing.
I summarized that study in my roundup yesterday of COVID-19 therapeutic research, pointing out that this randomized controlled trial of 150 patients "found no difference in the rate of viral load reduction or symptom alleviation between the group treated with hydroxychloroquine and the one that had not been." Now the University of Vermont pulmonologist Josh Farkas has published his own analysis of the results, delving more deeply into the data.
The patients in both arms of the study were well-matched demographically and clinically, Farkas notes. Most suffered relatively mild cases of the disease, and treatment was initiated fairly late—about 16 to 17 days after disease onset. Twenty-eight days into the trial, the researchers found essentially no difference between the two cohorts with respect to the percent of patients in which the virus was undetectable.
Farkas adds:
This endpoint most directly addresses the question: does hydroxychloroquine exert anti-viral activity in vivo? The answer seems to be: nope. Even if the drug were administered too late to affect the clinical course of the infection, if it exerted any anti-viral activity then we might expect to see that effect here. If anything, there might be a trend towards delayed viral clearance in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine.
The study also found that fever and respiratory symptoms did not abate any faster in patients who had been treated with hydroxychloroquine.
Farkas acknowledges the study's limits, including its small size and that the researchers were not blinded—that is, they knew which patients were being given the treatment. "Nonetheless," he says, "this study currently represents the highest available quality of evidence regarding hydroxychloroquine."
"For now, the best available evidence does not support the use of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19," Farkas concludes. "It seems prudent to restrict the use of hydroxychloroquine to randomized controlled studies for the time being." He does acknowledge that future studies in which COVID-19 patients are treated earlier in the course of their infections may yet find that hydroxychloroquine offers some therapeutic benefits. Fingers crossed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WN8RP7Bz6Q
Is this the bridge for sale?
The length of time before medication smelled fishy. Thanks for the evaluation.
Yes, we’ll do our OWN research thank you. China has ‘helped’ us quite enough already!
That, and they forgot to mention they were harvesting organs from the Covid patients to make a little money on the side....
The analysis that I saw was the HCQ plus zinc and zpac, and started early. The HCQ is thought to assist zinc to enter and fight the virus.
Not interested in studies that only use half of the treatment started too late—just those that the various docs have reported helpful.
Also the actual symptoms such as being able to breathe better are certainly positives—and not necessarily related to viral load.
JMO—HCQ is generic and not likely to make any PHARMA big bucks, so I don’t expect a lot of researchers to give the cheap solution a fair shake.
I wonder why they didn’t compare it to the one the French doctor did that worked extremely well? Hmmm....
A couple of points:
1. They needed zinc. It doesn’t look like they used it. Big mistake if so.
2. My favorite theory of how HCQ works is that it protects red blood cells from being depleted of oxygen. So the patient recovers. There is no reason to expect a reduction in viral load. The medication doesn’t directly attack the virus.
3. The only really worrisome comment was about no visible difference in the apparent health of both groups. But the zinc could explain that.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.20060558v1
A significant efficacy of HCQ on alleviating symptoms was observed when the confounding effects of anti-viral agents were removed in the post-hoc analysis (Hazard ratio, 8.83, 95%CI, 1.09 to 71.3)
This was further supported by a significantly greater reduction of CRP (6.986 in SOC plus HCQ versus 2.723 in SOC, milligram/liter, P=0.045) conferred by the addition of HCQ, which also led to more rapid recovery of lymphopenia, albeit no statistical significance.
Conclusions The administration of HCQ did not result in a higher negative conversion rate but more alleviation of clinical symptoms than SOC alone in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 without receiving antiviral treatment, possibly through anti-inflammatory effects. Adverse events were significantly increased in HCQ recipients but no apparently increase of serious adverse events.
Hey, that was just the ” thata way” one. The” thisa way” one is better. We fixed the “ thata way” one with some duct tape. Trust me I tell ya no lie sailor.
> The study has major limitations, for example:...
Other major limitation:
The study is from CHINA.
China lies.
Zinc + Azithromycin?
I thought the recipe that works is “HCQ + Z-pak + Zinc”.
They didn’t use it in combination with a Z Pak and zinc
Regarding your point 3, the late administration of the HCQ medicine (16-17 days after the display of the initial symptoms), was probably the main factor in the failure - but yes, not providing zinc did not help.
However, once you get to the point of organ failure (which they probably were at, or very near, after suffering through this disease for over two weeks), not much is going to work, unless God intervenes.
That’s going...Viral.
Seek and find always posting anti Trump communist BS
I read the study. It’s flawed, for sure. That said, it is likely that chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine will not prove to be a panacea. There are biological reasons why it might be effective, but it is unlikely to be the magic bullet that gets us past all of this. We should manage expectations.
Same could be said for Chemotherapy, yet nobody is calling to stop the use of it.
Depending upon the chemotherapy, you're absolutely right. I'm not calling for stopping the use of hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine, and I would most definitely treat Covid patients with it. That said, like most therapies for potentially lethal diseases, I do not expect it to be a miraculous cure. I hope it is, but it is unlikely to be.
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