Posted on 03/29/2020 9:06:53 PM PDT by snarkytart
(CNN) — The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an emergency use authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
The drugs — which are used to treat malaria and other conditions — have been called game changers by President Donald Trump.
But thus far, there is little scientific evidence that chloroquine, or its closely-related analogue hydroxychloroquine, are effective in treating Covid-19.
What happened? The authorization came in a letter dated Saturday, but the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) acknowledged the FDA’s action in a Sunday news release. The FDA limited the scope of its authorization to drugs supplied from the Strategic National Stockpile. The HHS announced that two pharmaceutical companies — Bayer and a division of Novartis — had donated the drugs to the stockpile.
Do the drugs work? In its statement, HHS said:
“Anecdotal reports suggest that these drugs may offer some benefit in the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. “The safety profile of these drugs has only been studied for FDA approved indications, not COVID-19.”
While there’s limited evidence on the efficacy of chloroquine, or hydroxychloroquine, the FDA said the drugs’ benefits outweighed their risk. In its letter, the FDA encouraged randomized clinical trials that could assess the effectiveness of the drugs. It also noted that the known and potential benefits outweigh the risks.
Who can the drugs be used to treat? The authorization is limited to patients who are currently hospitalized and weigh at least 50kg, or about 110 pounds. Under the emergency use authorization, health care providers must contact their local or state health department to access the drugs.
The French studies show greatly reduced effectiveness without azithromycin, and azithromycin has demonstrated some unexplained weird antiviral capabilities in the past - along with the other macrolide antibiotics.
https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/45/2/428
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17476348.2020.1730180
In fact, we’re not actually sure *how* macrolide antibiotics/antimicrobials work. We know what they do but we don’t know how they accomplish it; there are several theories and none have been proven to be ‘it’ yet. Prior to COVID-19, there were increasing numbers of studies looking into the macrolides that were generating distinct “WTF” reactions among researchers.
Zinc is a more critical part of helping the hydroxychloroquine work than azithromycin, and every multivitamin out there has some.
Actually, hydroxychloroquine is being used as a prophylactic. When combined with zinc (which we consume with food and in all multivitamins, it virtually stops viral replication, so the virus can’t get a foothold.
But there still is no reason to treat every uninfected person with it if we know it works. Treat those infected now - ALL of them - and test like mad to find the presently undiagnosed, and treat them ASAP. That, combined with everyone staying home to another few weeks, effectively ends this thing. The few cases that pop up afterwards can be treated piecemeal. We then build our stock up to several billion pills, make billions of mSks, tens of thousands of respirators, etc.
See my post 62. I was making a point - one pill does not equal one completely treated American, unlike what several here on FG seem to think. We’re going to need more than just 143K sets worth for treatment between now and when we get a working vaccine.
Investigate Quercetin. It, like hydroxychloroquine, let’s zinc enter cells. Not as effectively at low doses, but if you have CV symptoms and aren’t hospitalized, it seems like a very good second best choice. As it is, I take Quercetin a couple times a week, and my multivitamin and EmergenC have plenty of zinc.
Be your own advocate, and be educated about your conditions (generic you, as YOU clearly are). My mother nearly died last month of pneumonia because one of her docs was a f’ing idiot (I fired his ass) who was in no particular hurry to cure her. The new doc was much better, mainly because he was actually interested in her fast recovery.
Yep..i agree. Know your body. Know your symptoms ..and if a dr wont order a test you want do it yourself through www.directlabs.com.
I never said that 1 pill does the job. It is either 10 or 12, depending upon which study you look at. But treatment of ALL of the presently infected will take no more than 1.5 million pills. Test like mad to find other infected and treat them (and more pills are being made every minute during this process). Combined with most of us staying home to limit further infection, we lick 98% of this thing in a month, and can treat the few cases that turn up afterwards at our leisure while significantly building our stocks of hydroxychloroquine, PPE and respirators.
Didn’t say you did, but others seem to be reacting like it would.
I suspect that as the tests ramp up, we’re going to find a *lot* more people needing treatment, plus if the prophylactic effect some report is correct we will need to use it on all our medical personnel, which would deplete the stockpile in short order. I’m not saying that we can’t deal with it, just pointing out to others that “ooh, we have 100 million pills donated” is just a beginning, not a full solution.
Of course, but you and several other posters seem to be confusing an explanation for the question that was asked, with advocating not using the hydroxychloroquine+ treatment. I'm not aware of any prophylactic properties it offers, so treating the entire population of the US is a waste of resources, and may put people that are susceptible to the side effects at unnecessary risk.
“It also is reportedly not all that effective for people in the later stages of COVID-19.”
I think this is a red herring. The same could be said about almost any treatment of almost any disease.
It stands to reason that any treatment would be less effective in the late stages. For one thing, patients who enter late stages of Covid-19 typically suffered already from other life-threatening underlying conditions.
Also, the late stages of any disease involve myriads of medical complications, organ shut down, immune system collapse, respiratory or heart failure, brain damage, etc, etc.. Specifically, I have heard that late stage cases of Covid-19 almost always involve irreparable lung damage.
I am sure that attending physicians understand the way these anti-malaria drugs work, and whether or not it is too late for them to be effective in a particular case.
Getting rid of them is not a good idea as they do supply some good things. However, thinning the herd by 10-20% could probably be done with your eyes closed.
Tell me ONE THING the CDC has ever done that is germaine to their mission? They are more concerned about Climate Change than Pandemics, and also getting guns out of the hands of law-abiding Americans.
Well said. I am patiently waiting to see the results of the clinical tests of hydroxychloroquine in combination with zinc and Azithromycin. I think, thanks to the mosquito, we came up with a drug that will solve the COVIUD-19 killer.
Thanks for the info...I went to read about Lauricidan, read that Lauricidin is pure monolaurin, and then this sentence REALLY cheered me up:
“In foods, monolaurin is used in the production of ice cream, margarine, and spaghetti.”
Woo-Hoo! ;) xxx
Thanks for the info!
Well, I can’t say that I do because I haven’t had that condition before. But I do know that all candidates for any kind of treatment are pre-screened in advance by doctors and their staff to look for risk factors that may reduce or eliminate the efficacy of a particular medication for that particular patient.
There is no drug in the world that doesn’t have some risks, and every patient is not a candidate for every drug. I am quite aware of that fact and assumed, to most people, that was a given. However, hydroxychloroquine is safe for the great majority of citizens and those in a media that say it’s not are simply lying.
In regards to a solution for someone that already has the virus and cannot take hydroxychloroquine, maybe there is something over the counter that acts as an ionophore and will allow zinc to enter the cell to fight the virus. Although I looked for such a substance already, I could not find one. Hopefully you’ll have better luck.
One Dr recommended Quercetin Phytosome to be a zinc transporter with zinc picolinate on the texags site.
So maybe it will work before someone needs prescription meds
That’s a great thing. I just did a little research and found out that yes, it should work as it is in zinc ionophore.
I also found this:
“GLM has also been tested in vitro by numerous institutions and by the CDC and it has been indicated that monolaurin may dissolve lipids in the fatty envelope around the virus, basically disintegrating the organisms’ protective shield and causing them to be easily destroyed by the immune system.’
https://texags.com/forums/84/topics/3102608
After reading about this compound, I also suspect that it may act as a prophylactic against SARS-CoV-2. I’m glad you found something that might work and wish you luck with it.
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