No benefit, higher death count for malaria drug in coronavirus study
22 April, 2020
A malaria drug widely touted as a potential cure for COVID-19 showed no benefit against the condition over standard care -- and was actually associated with more deaths, the largest study of its kind showed Tuesday.
The US government funded analysis of how American military veterans fared on hydroxychloroquine was posted on a medical preprint site and hasn't yet been peer reviewed.
The experiment had a number of important limitations, but increases a growing body of doubt over the efficacy of the medicine that matters President Donald Trump and right wing news channel Fox News among its biggest backers.
Researchers viewed the medical records of 368 veterans hospitalized nationwide who either died or were discharged by April 11.
Death rates for patients on hydroxychloroquine were 28 percent, in comparison to 22 percent when it had been taken with the anti-biotic azithromycin -- a mixture favored by French scientist Didier Raoult, whose study about them in March triggered a surge of global interest in the drug.
The death rate for all those acquiring only standard care was 11 percent.
Hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, was more likely to be approved to patients with more severe illness, however the authors found that increased mortality persisted even once they statistically adjusted for higher rates useful.
Other drawbacks are the fact that the study did not assign people randomly to groups, since it was a retrospective analysis meaning it looked back on what had already happened.
In addition, the email address details are hard to generalize since the population was highly specific: almost all of the patients were male, with a median age over 65, and black, an organization that is disproportionately affected by underlying illnesses like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
There is no added risk of being on ventilator among the hydroxychloroquine only group, leading the authors to recommend that increased mortality among this group could possibly be attributable to side-effects beyond your respiratory system.
Previous research has found that the medicine is risky for patients with certain heart rhythm issues and will cause blackouts, seizures or sometimes cardiac arrest in this group.
Hydroxychloroquine and a related compound chloroquine have already been used for decades to take care of malaria, along with the autoimmune disorders lupus and arthritis rheumatoid.
They have obtained significant attention through the novel coronavirus pandemic and have been proven in lab settings to block the virus from entering cells preventing it replicating -- however in the pharmaceutical world, "in vitro" promise often does not translate into "in vivo" success.
The true answer can only be determined through large, randomized clinical trials that assign patients to get either the drug under investigation or a placebo.
Several of these are underway, including notably in america, Europe, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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