DeNicola said the controversy surrounding the drug “makes no sense.” The drug has been used since the 20th century to treat connective tissue diseases, he said, and prescribing it has been “second nature” to him.
“I just can’t explain all the negativity to it … all I can do is report what I saw,” he said, citing a 100 percent recovery rate.
The Food and Drug Administration approved hydroxychloroquine for emergency use on March 28. DeNicola immediately began treating his patients with it, coupled with zinc and the antibiotic azithromycin (also known as Z-pak).
He said he uses “the patient’s age, health status, degree of illness, and whether or not the infection is improving or not” to determine whether to prescribe the drug.
DeNicola said he has prescribed the drug to 18 “severely ill” patients. Within three days, they all felt much better.
In some cases, the patients’ lungs fill up with “copious” amounts of liquid or mucus, DeNicola said, making them feel as if they’re drowning. But after taking hydroxychloroquine, they began to feel their lungs clear up and their energy restored—in two or three days.
DeNicola started curbside testing of patients in Laguna Beach on March 10. Since then, his company, Caduceus Medical Group, has tested over 2,000 people for the disease.
Of the 95 confirmed patients DeNicola has treated so far, 40 percent are under 40 years old, he said. Ten percent are over 65, and the remainder are between 40–65. Men and women are affected equally. A few have underlying health conditions.
“They’re 40 to 50 years old, they’re not geriatric,” DeNicola said. “All the patients are actually quite healthy.”
DeNicola said that 90 percent of his patients cite fatigue as the biggest symptom. “Only 80 percent have fever at all, and almost half have parageusia (loss of taste and smell),” his blog states.
One of his patients—a 60-year-old man with diabetes—suffered for 28 days before recovering. Others recovered after roughly two weeks.
DeNicola has been prescribing hydroxychloroquine for years, to combat lupus, malaria, and other connective tissue diseases. He began administering the drug early in the pandemic when he noticed its effectiveness against a severe case of COVID-19.
“One severe case in March was given Plaquenil [hydroxychloroquine] almost as a last resort,” according to his blog. “There was immediate improvement so we used it again. And again. Every case improved.”
The blog added that there have been “no cardiac issues.”
Another 95 anecdotes...
I’m not rich or famous, but I am a good researcher and I learned very early that if you want to prove or disprove earlier findings by someone else, you have to first repeat the study exactly as originally described. Then you can start doing variations on the procedures to see what is right or wrong. It sounds like this guy is doing the right thing to reproduce the early positive findings.
Covid 19 is so April and May! We’re on to riots and anarchy now.
They KNOW IT WORKS. That’s why they have made it nearly impossible to get. Think about it.