Henry Ford uses hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 symptoms, says benefits outweigh risks (Michigan)

Michigan NPR ^ | 4 HOURS AGO | By CAROLINE LLANES

[cba123]

Henry Ford Health System says it’s been using the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat severe cases of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients.

Hydroxychloroquine recently gained a large amount of attention after President Donald Trump mentioned the anti-arthritis and anti-malaria drug in his March 20 press conference as being promising. Since then, there has been much discussion as to whether the drug is actually effective in treating COVID-19.

Dr. Marcus Zervos is an infectious disease specialist at Henry Ford. He says staff at Henry Ford has been using hydroxychloroquine to treat the most severe cases of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients.

“We are not using it in outpatients, we're not using it in patients with mild infection, we are using it, however, in patients that are sick enough to be hospitalized with pneumonia that we feel are at risk of progressing their infection.” He adds, “We feel that there is data both from the early published studies as well as from our colleagues in China that have treated a number of patients to justify its use in the therapy of sicker patients that are hospitalized with coronavirus infection.”

(Please see link, for full article)

[gogeo]

Well, at least it’s progress.

[gogeo]

Why give something with possible adverse effects to someone who doesn’t need it?

This "business as usual" attitude is killing people.

[vigilante2]

Lyme disease also

[BeauBo]

This hospital has been using the HCQ (Trump Pills) through the last three weeks, according to another story that was posted on Free Republic.

That means that they were doing it in defiance of the Dem Governor’s order not to.

They must have felt very strongly that they needed to use these drugs, as a life or death issue. Results have borne them out.

How many people elsewhere throughout the State (who did not have such well informed and courageous doctors), died as a result of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s petty and politically motivated restriction?

Those families should be located, and given legal representation to pursue justice.

[clearcarbon]

Has Hydroxychloroquine manufacture gone to ludicrous speed yet?

[Steve Van Doorn]

As I understand it Hydroxychloroquine works as an ionosphere as you describe and raises the PH in the cell.

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/hydroxychloroquine

The process when the body gets to acidic is called acidosis which excessive drinking can cause. The process when the body get to alkaline is called alkalosis

[trebb]

That part comes later down the road - kind of like not prescribing an antibiotic for something when Mucinex and other symptom relievers are fine while the body finishes the bug off...while getting rid of the bug faster in the “marginally ill” would be nice, at this time it might also make some feel safer to others than they may actually be and allow them to interact faster...always a set of opposing up-down sides.

[kabar]

Disagree for the reasons in my multiple posts on this thread. If you have a confirmed case of the virus, you should get a therapeutic that eliminates the virus from your body. We don’t have enough data at this point to understand how infectious the virus is. Asymptomatic persons could still spread the virus or the virus could smolder in the body and then erupt. Better safe than sorry.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

if you give it to 500 people who test positive and compare that 500 to 500 ^{the many thousands of} others who don’t get it, you can see whether the HCQ group ends up with as many hospitalizations, intubations, and deaths as the non-HCQ group . . .

And if the difference was dramatic, then maybe, just maybe, you have a “game changer.”

Never happen; that is definitely too smart.

You could even experiment with various lengths of HCQ treatment, if the pills are in such short supply.

Maybe just one or two treatments would make a statistically significant improvement in hospitalization rate, and it would pay to spread the distribution over more of the most vulnerable population.

[plushaye]

Eastern Virginia Medical School covid19 protocol (Mar 26) for severely ill patients as per Dr Marik, Chief Critical Care Officer, posted here:

https://covid19treatmentprotocols.blogspot.com/

Includes:

1) Chloroquine 500mg BID for 7-10 days or hydroxychloroquine 400mg BID day 1 followed by 200mg BID for 4 days

2) Azithromycin 500mg day 1 then 250mg for 4 days

3) Zn 75-100mg/day

4) Vit C 3g IV q 6 hourly until extubated and at least 4 days upto 10 days

5) Thiamine 200mg q 12 (PO or IV)

“Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine significantly decrease the duration of viral shedding. These agents (if available) could be used to mitigate/curtail the spread of this virus. They may be used in elderly patients with comorbidities at risk of progression and death.”

“Zn inhibits viral RNA dependent RNA polymerase (replicase) . Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are potent Zn ionophores that increase intracellular Zn concentrations.”

[Svartalfiar]

Why give something with possible adverse effects to someone who doesn’t need it? It takes meds from someone who might really need it..exposes person to drug toxicities...and cost money.

That's what a lot of drugs are - possible side effects, and not actually necessary. People pop pills for the slightest fever/headache/anything, risking (extremely low, but they are there) whatever side effects those meds may have. If it helps, then why not give it to them? Also, you don't know how severe their case might get. Better to give it to them early and keep them mild, then let them crash and only then give the drugs, when there's more long-term damage potential, greater use of hospital resources, and a much more difficult recovery.

Also, all of these quinine drugs are pretty abundant, and crazy cheap. I think someone here said it's about $20 for a (ten? pill) course of treatment. And I believe that's without insurance. They've been around for a long time, mostly for malaria. The military has plenty of stock as that's part of the regular stuff given to troops going to any location with jungle/known malaria areas.