Coronavirus patients treated with hydroxychloroquine fared no better, early study results find
Patients treated with hydroxychloroquine have no better chance of survival than those who don’t receive the drug hailed by Trump as a ‘game-changer’, results of a New York state Health Department trial suggest.
‘I think from the review that I heard basically it was not seen as a positive, not seen as a negative,’ said Governor Andrew Cuomo during CNN’s coronavirus town hall.
Ultimately, the study, conducted by SUNY at Albany, is intended to involved some 4,000 coronavirus patients, but the preliminary results are from a sample of 600 patients.
Survival rates were no better among the group treated with the experimental drug than among those who got the standard supportive care, including oxygen, IV fluids and, if necessary, mechanical ventilation.
On Friday, shortly after preliminary results were reported, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) formally warned against using the drug outside of hospitals due to the risk that it could cause heart arrhythmias.

Early results of a trial using hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients found that they fared no better than those treated with standard supportive care (file)
It’s a major blow to President Trump, who has sung the praises of the drug, as well as to the global search for an effective treatment for coronavirus.
More than 50,000 Americans have died of coronavirus, and 890,000 have been infected.

Officials and doctors alike have hoped that hydroxychloroquine, a drug developed nearly half a century ago to treat malaria, might improve coronavirus patients’ odds by combating severe inflammation resulting from the viral infection.
In lab tests, the drug showed promise, appearing to quell the ‘cytokine storm’ of immune signalling cells that causes inflammation to run wild in the body, overwhelming the lungs.
Hydroxychloroquine interacts with the human immune response, making it useful in treating autoimmune diseases like lupus.
It was even added the official lists of treatments to try for doctors treating COVID-19 patients in China and South Korea, a French study suggested a near 100 percent recovery rate for those treated with hydroxychloroquine, and it was voted the most ‘effective’ treatment (anecdotally) in an international survey of doctors.
But the latest early results suggest that there’s no objective benefit from using the drug.

President Trump has touted hydroxychloroquine as a ‘game-changer’ for treating COVID-19 – despite the fact the drug hasn’t been proven effective

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on CNN on Thursday night that review had shown no positive or negative effect
Of the 600-some coronavirus patients treated at 22 New York City area hospitals, some were treated with hydroxychloroquine alone, others were treated with the malaria drug plus the antibiotic azithromycin, and a third group got only the typical supportive care.
‘We don’t see a statistically significant difference between patients who took the drugs and those who did not,’ Dr David Holtgrave, who led the SUNY Albany study told CNN.
Notably, there were not higher rates of heart problems among the patients given hydroxychloroquine, despite the potential for dangerous arrhythmias as a side effect.
It comes after a Veteran Affairs study found that more COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine died than did those who didn’t receive the drug.
Dr Holtgrave stressed, however, that the results of his stud are preliminary findings of an ongoing study that have not been peer-reviewed or published.

With no effective treatment or a vaccine, coronavirus continues to kill thousands of Americans a day, with the death toll surpassing 50,000 by Friday
Dr Holtgrave and his team expect the full research, inclusive of 1,200 patients, will be ready for release as early as next week.
‘Hopefully what we’ve done here is to start collecting data and evidence and learning lessons as we go forward about effects and side effects,’ he told CNN.
Echoing Dr Holtgrave’s sentiments during CNN’s round table, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn said: ‘Obviously you need to wait for the entire cohort of individuals to have been treated with the complete course of treatment to get a full read on that.’
So far, the researchers have only revealed a hint at comparative survival rates, but the full study will also detail differing hospital stay lengths and whether patients treated or not treated with hydroxychloroquine had to be put in ICUs on ventilators, according to CNN.
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Source: Daily Mail | Health News