Trump’s hydroxycolloquine for coronavirus fails another test

The President of the United States, Donald Trump. (AP)

The treatment of malaria repeatedly defended by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, as a “game changer” in the fight against the new coronavirus has again failed to show a benefit in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, according to a study published on Thursday.

Although the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine had certain limitations, doctors reported that the use of hydroxycolloquine did not decrease the need for patients requiring respiratory assistance or the risk of death.

“We did not see any association between obtaining this drug and the possibility of dying or being intubated,” lead investigator Dr. Neil Schluger told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“The patients who received the drug did not appear to improve.”

Among patients who received hydroxychloroquine, 32.3% ended up needing a ventilator or dying, compared to 14.9% of patients who did not receive the medication.

But doctors were more likely to administer hydroxychloroquine to sicker patients, so researchers at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Irving Medical Center at Columbia University adjusted the rates to account for that. They concluded that the medication may not have hurt the patients, but it clearly did not help.

Decades of hydroxychloroquine, which is also used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, showed no benefit when combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, Schluger’s team reported. Azithromycin alone also showed no benefit.

Last month, doctors at the US Department of Veterans Affairs. USA They reported that hydroxychloroquine did not help COVID-19 patients and could present an increased risk of death.

That analysis of medical records showed a 28% mortality rate when the drug was administered in addition to standard treatments, compared to 11% with standard care alone.

In the last study, 811 patients received hydroxychloroquine and 565 did not. Because they were not randomized to receive hydroxychloroquine or a placebo, “the study should not be taken to rule out either the benefit or the harm” of the drug, the researchers said. Randomized trials, the gold standard for testing new therapies, should continue, they added.

But for now, “the focus in our hospital has changed, so we don’t recommend giving hydroxychloroquine to hospitalized patients,” said Dr. Schluger, chief of the division of pulmonary medicine, for allergies and critical care at Irving.

Smaller studies, including one conducted in China, suggested that hydroxychloroquine might be helpful, “but these were small studies and not of good quality. People seized them because the patients died, “he said.

There are currently no approved treatments for COVID-19, although the experimental remdesivir of antiviral drugs from Gilead Sciences Inc received authorization for emergency use from US regulators. USA Last week.

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