Posted on 04/19/2020 6:28:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Dozens of people taking hydroxychloroquine and other autoimmune drugs for chronic ailments such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis have tested positive for the CCP (The Chinese Communist Party) virus, according to data compiled by the Global Rheumatology Alliance.
The study is sponsored by an international collaborative, the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance, which includes a large group of academics, clinicians, and patients working together, and so far suggests that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t always protect against the disease, which originated in Wuhan, China, in December last year.
Over 9,500 patients have submitted surveys to the alliance, of which nearly half were diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. Nearly a third of all respondents with the chronic disease said they were taking hydroxychloroquine, of which 189 (7 percent) said they were diagnosed with the virus.
Separately, patient information provided by rheumatologists and published on Thursday in The Lancet Rheumatology also suggests the antimalarials may not adequately protect people from the virus. Of the first 110 patients reported, 69 were taking medications such as hydroxychloroquine to treat chronic ailments like systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis, before being diagnosed with the coronavirus.
As of April 1, 2020, 110 individuals with rheumatic disease who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 are included from six continents: Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.
However, the research doesn’t specifically address whether hydroxychloroquine is effective at treating coronavirus symptoms, and researchers acknowledged that one limitation to the study is that some countries test only people showing severe symptoms.
Jinoos Yazdany, chief of the division of rheumatology at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, told The Wall Street Journal that the antimalarial doesn’t fully protect people from contracting the new virus and is “not a magic bullet because people that are on it are contracting the infection.”
On March 28, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized emergency use of the drug, which President Donald Trump has also touted as a “game changer” in the fight against the CCP virus, allowing the federal government to begin distributing millions of doses to states across the United States. However, as of yet, no large clinical trials have been conducted to validate smaller studies and prove the drug can safely be used to treat the disease, prompting medical professionals, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States’ leading infectious disease expert and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, to caution against using the drug.
Speaking at a White House news conference on March 20, Fauci said data on the drug so far “was not done in a controlled clinical trial. So you really can’t make any definitive statement about it,” and that only such studies would determine if the drug was truly safe and effective.
A number of clinical trials exploring the drug’s efficacy and safety are currently underway around the world, including a 1,500-person trial at the University of Minnesota. Three early studies, two from France and one from China, indicate a benefit of utilising hydroxychloroquine but have been branded inadequate by some in the medical community.
India, which manufactures 70 percent of the world’s supply of hydroxychloroquine, agreed on April 7 to lift an earlier ban on the export of the drug following a telephone conversation between U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Trump had said at a previous press conference that India could face retaliation if it failed to lift the ban and release the 29 million doses of the drug it had ordered for its medical stockpile.
Good question.
This tends to go against the Rheumy that we read about, in the past few weeks, who said that NONE of her patients, who were on the HCQ maintenance drug, had contracted CCP flu.
Now, that was just one doc, but...
And, like you said.....just 7% got the virus, per this study.
When several of the most cited studies relied on both viral load measurements and the disappearance of symptoms the original author's statement is misleading. I would hope that most people would understand that a drug which drove the viral load down to zero without harming the patient is what everyone wants when they are looking for a treatment. That is more important than getting rid of symptoms, like a headache or sore muscles. We've got Tylenol for that job.
This guy surely isn't a biased actor in this, right?????
Jinoos Yazdany, chief of the division of rheumatology at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, told The Wall Street Journal that the antimalarial doesn’t fully protect people from contracting the new virus and is “not a magic bullet because people that are on it are contracting the infection.”
I'm disappointed that Epoch Times didn't pick up on this, and ask him questions that I am asking.
No one has made the claim that it is a magic bullet. That phrase is being used as a dog whistle in case you haven't learned this yet. Instead they have said that it helps patients recover, and that it is at least something that can be used to fight back against the virus and save lives.
Hydroxychloroquine inhibits the late endosome transition to lysosome, which the virus needs for its processing after entering the cell and subsequent release of its RNA into the cell. It doesn’t require zinc. People are claiming that azithromycin is the one bringing zinc into the cell - don’t conflate the two.
I don’t recall anyone calling HCQ a cure.
It has shown to help many who have taken it. To deny that is to deny what is right in front of your eyes.
Every medicine has side and adverse effects. And, no medicine has its intended therapeutic effect for its entire targeted audience.
“* Of the 5,000 - 189 = 4,811 who DID NOT get it, were they similarly exposed to Covid-19 as the other 189?”
That is the key to drawing meaningful inferences about HCQ prophylaxis from the survey. Unfortunately, “similarly exposed” is impossibly to quantify in a post facto survey. The only conclusion I can see is that HCQ might have prevented coronavirus infection in somewhere between 0% and 93% of the survey respondents on HCQ. Hopefully clinical studies can narrow the range a bit. My guess is that HCQ combo’s work at a stage when the virus is already established in the system — rather than preventing infection in the first place.
I’d like to see them apply the same standards to chemotherapy and cancer.
RE: I don’t recall anyone calling HCQ a cure.
I don’t either. I do read about people HOPING that it would act as a prophylactic against Covid-19 infection.
Among some of their observations:
1) The infected Diamond Princess Cruise Ship had passengers who were taking HCQ as an anti-malarial drug. NONE of these passengers were infected.
2) Some hospitals noticed that Lupus and Rheumatoid arthritis patients who are taking HCQ do not get infected with Covid-19
3) Doctors seem to be taking it as a prophylactic
4) India’s populace uses HCQ as an antimalarial and their country, with 4 times America’s population and more densely populated have orders of a magnitude less cases than the USA.
That’s it. All observations... limited at that.
Well, this Epoch Times article in this thread seems to somewhat disprove at least #2 above.
I would not take observation #4 above seriously since India is not a country that does testing as widely as we have done.
The article is pure bunk: It was written:
“However, the research doesn’t specifically address whether hydroxychloroquine is effective at treating coronavirus symptoms, and researchers acknowledged that one limitation to the study is that some countries test only people showing severe symptoms.”
I think the tone is more tearing down people hoping for some sort of miracle cure or jumping to conclusions in advance of long term widespread tests.
We can’t, and won’t know anything for sure until we have a sample of some thousands who are known not infected, give half of them HCQ and/or whatever other treatment, and then resampling sometime later, comparing rate and severity of infections of the treated to the untreated.
Nothing wrong with hoping the HCQ is effective, either at as prophylaxis or as a treatment, but some folks get their panties in a wad when people say “maybe, maybe not, we have to test and see”; if someone says “maybe not, we don’t have enough data”, going ballistic and attacking them just makes the person so doing look like the ignorant A-hole they are.
It might help, it might help a lot; without LOTS more data we don’t really know, despite what anyone might want to believe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.