The researchers found that the estimated number of hydroxychloroquine prescriptions increased 86.2% from February to March, from 367,346 to 683,999, and chloroquine prescriptions increased 158.6%, from 2,346 to 6,066 prescriptions.
The combination of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin was also promoted as a possible treatment for coronavirus infection. The analysis shows that the estimated number of patients who received both drugs increased by 1,004% between February and March, from 8,885 to 101,681.
The data, published in a research letter Monday by the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, found that prescription rates for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine remained stable from October 2019 to February 2020. The analysis only examined the data until March.
The authors noted that the prescription increase might not be for Covid-19, as their data did not include what the medications were prescribed for. Still, they wrote that the surge in hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine prescriptions may have affected the availability of patients who were prescribed medications for uses approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, including for treating rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and malaria.
The FDA withdrew its emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for Covid-19 on June 15.
Some researchers thought that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine could fight the coronavirus based on initial laboratory tests, and President Trump became a cheerleader for the treatment, calling it “very encouraging” and “very powerful” and a “change in game”.
But in recent studies of patients with Covid-19, the drugs have not largely accumulated. The National Institutes of Health stopped a randomized clinical trial, considered the gold standard for determining the drug’s efficacy, after data showed that hydroxychloroquine provided no benefit to patients with Covid-19.
“While there was no harm, the study drug was highly unlikely to be of benefit to hospitalized patients with Covid-19,” the NIH said in a June 20 news release.
A team from the Southeast Michigan Henry Ford Health System announced last week that they found that Covid-19 patients who received hydroxychloroquine were much less likely to die, but other researchers have raised questions about the finding.
“All of the evidence is so much on the drug side that it has no effect. The vast majority of studies strongly agree on that,” said Dr. Neil Schluger, chair of New York Medical’s department of medicine. College, who co-authored an observational study showing that hydroxychloroquine had no association in intubation or death rates for 1,376 patients with coronavirus.
Schluger and other researchers have pointed out flaws in Henry Ford’s team’s analysis that may have contributed to the positive finding, including that decreased mortality may be the result of doctors becoming more skilled in treating patients with Covid- 19, regardless of prescribed therapy.
“Obviously, we would all love to have treatments that work for this disease,” Schluger said. “But I think we still have to wait.”
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