Hydroxycloroquine as treatment for COVID19 virus

[VMA131Marine]

The French study on the use of Hydroxycloroquine and Azithromycin for COVID19 is online and open to comments. Let me tell you, there are comments. Below is an excerpt from one of the clearest and most concise which notes that of the 26 original participants, 6 were not included in the result because 1 died, 1 had severe side effects, 3 were transferred to ICU, and 1 went home. None of the 15 controls died. The study measured viral load by nasal swab, but it’s not clear that this is a predictor of outcome and it appears that the control group were not monitored as carefully as the patients receiving the drugs. There was no placebo group.

1) There were 26 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine. Of these 6 are excluded because they did not continue the full 10 day course of treatment; 3 were transferred to ICU, one died, one discontinued due to adverse reaction (nausea) and one left hospital early.

Thus among the 26 patients started on with hydroxychloroquine, 15% (4/26) went to ICU or died vs. 0/15 of the controls, a difference that may be due to chance. However the baseline characteristics of the 6 patients who deteriorated rapidly are not presented in Supplementary Table 1. The analysis of outcomes of the treated group are based on the remaining 20 treated patients.

Here’s a link to the paper

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.16.20037135v1