Covid 19 coronavirus: hydroxychloroquine: the drug that could be our savior

A division drug touted by Donald Trump may contain the secrets to stopping the spread of Covid-19, and its potential is enormous.

Every morning before Claire Lobb goes to work on the front lines of Victoria’s second wave coronavirus crisis, she takes a mystery pill.

There is a 50 to 50 chance that what you ingest is hydroxychloroquine, a controversial drug promoted by Donald Trump, which could prevent millions of people around the world from contracting Covid-19.

Alternatively, it could just be an extra dose of sugar as a late garnish for your breakfast. She has no way of knowing.

But the simple act you take every morning has the potential to change the world.

It is part of a hotly debated groundbreaking drug trial in Australia that has the potential to be a “game changer” in the global battle against Covid-19.

This cheap and easily accessible drug has been used for more than 30 years for a variety of reasons. Now the researchers behind the trial say it could prevent people from contracting the virus and ultimately save lives.

If successful, it could be used by people who want to travel abroad. They would only have to take it during their trip.

It could protect people who may not be able to get the Covid vaccine for health reasons, or those in countries where the vaccine could take a long time to arrive.

It could protect Australians and people around the world who are most at risk of Covid-19, including residents and elderly care staff, meat workers and healthcare workers.

Lobb understands what that means as much as anyone.

As a Nurse Practitioner in Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital Emergency Department, she has been on Australia’s front line against coronavirus.

Every day, he is tasked with admitting to Melburnians that they may or may not have the disease.

“We don’t always know and sometimes it can be quite difficult not to always know what we are dealing with,” he told news.com.au.

With mental health problems in patients and a massive increase in health worker infections in recent weeks, he said the work has been “intense and stressful.”

“It is not always a good time to work just because of the intensity of the situation,” he said.

So, given the stresses of your work life, why would you want to participate in an experiment with a drug that was endorsed by the same US president that seemed to suggest that injecting bleach might be a cure for coronavirus?

To understand why, you need to look at a key difference in what Trump said about hydroxychloroquine and what this new study in Australia is investigating.

In late March and early April, Trump repeatedly proclaimed that hydroxychloroquine could prevent or treat Covid-19.

In a matter of days, the number of prescriptions for the drug skyrocketed despite no evidence that it could treat the disease.

However, the Australian essay, led by the Walter Institute and Eliza Hall, sees it from a different angle.

The lead investigator for the trial, Professor Marc Pellegrini, told news.com.au that there had been a storm of confusion about hydroxychloroquine since the US president’s comments.

However, he believes that should be put aside and that science should speak up.

His team began testing healthcare workers in early June in a clinical trial at hospitals along Australia’s east coast, which have been hit hardest by Covid-19.

The goal is simple, to see if the drug can prevent people from contracting the virus.

“It’s been very politicized, but we think it’s best to use the right science to understand if it plays any role in preventing people from getting Covid-19,” he said.

There are now about 200 medical workers using hydroxychloroquine as part of the trial, and the results will be available by January of next year.

It’s too early to say what those results might look like, but Professor Pellegrini says science already tells us the drug doesn’t work as a treatment for coronavirus.

However, his team is looking into whether it can be used as something called pre-exposure prophylaxis, meaning it could work as a preventative before someone comes into contact with someone with Covid-19.

“The reason behind this is that many drugs work very well to prevent people from getting a disease, but when they do, they don’t work,” he said.

“Two of our best flu drugs work like this. HIV drugs work incredibly well to keep people from getting infected.”

He said that hydroxychloroquine has been shown to work against Covid-19 in a test tube, but there is no evidence that it works clinically.

“Obviously it became divisive because it was very politicized,” he said. “Obviously, when politicians who are very polarizing express an opinion that is not based on good science, it obviously dilutes the potential merit of the drug.

“It’s really important to dissociate the rumors and the politicization of the drug from the real evidence. The evidence is in the test tube, but we really need it to be tested in people.

“It would be very remiss of us to dump a drug that could change the rules of the game in Covid-19 according to the opinions of a few people who have polarized large sectors of society.”

Due to the political debate surrounding the drug, he says that very poorly done studies were carried out to show that people did not tolerate the drug, which were later refuted and even retracted.

The split also left people unsure whether the drug was safe.

However, Professor Pellegrini assured news.com.au that hydroxychloroquine is safe when taken under some degree of medical supervision. He even compared it to Panadol or Nurofen.

“It is a drug that has been around for 30 years and is used routinely, so we know all the side effects,” he said.

“If you give it to the wrong person, you could get into trouble. But obviously we are being incredibly careful about making sure we administer the drug under the strictest medical supervision. The reason is that we haven’t tested the drug works.”

He said it was feared the drug could cause heartbeat abnormalities, however there is no evidence to support this.

“It can cause an upset stomach just like any drug, but the main concern was its effect on the heart and it has been categorically shown in large treatment studies that the drug simply does not have the ability to cause any major adverse effects on the heart. disease.”

Trial participant Lobb said the media storm over the drug had made it difficult to obtain real evidence.

“That politicization of the drug has not been of any help,” he said. “The most important thing we need here is evidence-based therapy and that is why we are having a clinical trial.

“It has been very difficult because many people do not understand, they hear hydroxychloroquine and they think it is a stupid drug because it was supported by Donald Trump.”

However, as a nurse practitioner, Lobb said she is too qualified to pay attention to media rhetoric, especially since she has dealt with drugs for many years.

“We are health professionals and we are guided by evidence-based practice, so a rhetoric in the media is not going to influence my decision to do a drug trial or not,” he said. In fact, it further reinforces the need to do so. “

The incentive to find out if the drug works against Covid-19 is huge, given that it is cheap, readily available, and shows good signs that it works against the virus.

Professor Pellegrini said there were many different scenarios in which the drug could be used to prevent infections, from traveling abroad to protecting workers and staff in nursing homes.

“For example, if there was a case in a meat factory or a nursing home, you would go there and give the medicine to all the residents or workers to try to prevent them from contracting Covid-19,” he said.

“And people who travel for work in an area where there is a lot of Covid-19, could take this drug for as long as they are in this high-risk area.”

However, even if the drug works, he said it will not replace a vaccine.

He says that a vaccine will take a long time to test, up to a year or more, and there is no guarantee that it will be 100% effective.

“So if there is a drug that is available and is clinically well tolerated, it is probably best to start using that drug to prevent people from getting infected while we wait for a vaccine,” he said. “Also, no vaccine is 100 percent effective, so we will always need a backup.”

Meanwhile, Lobb is two-thirds of the way down his four-month trial and there have been no side effects so far. You haven’t contracted Covid-19 either, although it’s worth noting again that you could be taking a placebo.

All you do is take the pill every morning and complete a short survey on your phone.

She sees it as a little way that she can help the world beat this virus. You want more people to get involved.

“It could be really important because we don’t know when a vaccine will arrive and not all countries will have access to the vaccine,” he said.

“We have to think about our Third World colleagues who will not be able to access or pay for a vaccine.”

The trial is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, the gold standard, and has been reviewed by Melbourne Health’s Human Research Ethics Committee and various bodies accredited by the NHMRC.

The trial is open to any healthcare worker in Australia who is at risk of contracting Covid-19.