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Study: Hydroxychloroquine no better than placebo for COVID-19 patients

While the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was touted early in the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential treatment, studies have found it has no effect on the infection. Photo by UPI
While the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was touted early in the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential treatment, studies have found it has no effect on the infection. Photo by UPI | License Photo

Nov. 9 (UPI) -- COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine showed no signs of significant improvement in "clinical status" compared with those given a placebo, a study published Monday by JAMA found.

Patients given a five-day course of the drug were scored as "category six" based on the World Health Organization's seven-category COVID Ordinal Outcomes Scale, the same as those given a placebo, the researchers said.

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Also, 28 days after they started treatment, 10.4% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died, just slightly lower than the 10.6% fatality rate in the placebo group.

"The results show that hydroxychloroquine did not help patients recover from COVID-19," study co-author Dr. Wesley H. Self told UPI.

"In the study, patients treated with hydroxychloroquine and those treated with a placebo had nearly identical outcomes, [so] I do not foresee any role for hydroxychloroquine in acutely ill patients hospitalized with COVID-19," said Self, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Hydroxychloroquine is an immunosuppressive and anti-parasitic drug that is used to treat malaria.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, it was touted by President Donald Trump and others as a potential treatment for the virus, despite the lack of any scientific data supporting its use.

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Given its effectiveness helping those sickened with malaria -- a mosquito-borne infection -- to recover, "there was a strong rationale for why hydroxychloroquine may have been beneficial for patients with COVID-19," according to Self.

However, in July, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned against the drug's use in the treatment of those infected with the new coronavirus, due to potentially serious heart-related side effects.

For this study, Self and his colleagues treated 433 COVID-19 patients at 34 hospitals across the United States with either the drug or a placebo for a period of five days.

Patients assigned to the hydroxychloroquine group received 400 milligrams of the drug in pill form twice a day for the first two doses and then 200 mg. in pill form twice a day for the next eight doses, for a total of 10 doses over the five days.

All of the patients were then assessed based on the WHO's COVID Ordinal Outcomes Scale, which categorizes those infected according to disease severity.

Most of the patients in both the hydroxycholorquine group and the placebo group were in "category six," meaning they were hospitalized and receiving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or invasive mechanical ventilation to maintain their breathing, the researchers said.

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"Our results, especially when combined from other studies conducted in the United Kingdom and Brazil, are good evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not provide benefit for patients hospitalized with COVID-19," Self said.

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