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Chloroquine, past and present

blogs.sciencemag.org

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Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#101

Post by jki275 »

icelancer wrote: post #52
Munky-Necan wrote: post #46

Until there's a double blind placebo trial I will take this type of report with a truck load of salt. We want randomized control trials in medicine. We want highly vetted research in medicine. Lacking either is a bad idea. I am also not holding my breath about a vaccine. We tried making a vaccine with SARS-CoV with a significant amount of the animal models dying from cytokine storm after viral exposure. Drug trials a…

>> Until there's a double blind placebo trial I will take this type of report with a truck load of salt. You're welcome to. The remainder of the world should have the choice. Some people can't - or don't - want to wait for an RCT with a sample size in the thousands before taking a cheap and well-known drug with well-tolerated side effects.

To be fair, I don't think that he's saying it should be banned -- he's saying that we need a lot more testing before claiming this is a cure based on one study with a tiny number of participants. His statement is accurate.

And the quinine derivatives have some very subtle neurological effects that last a lifetime. Suicidal ideations -- for life and incurable -- are a well known side effect of mefloquine at least. Maybe this one doesn't have those effects, I don't know -- but there's a really good argument to do a lot of testing before taking this in any other than an in-extremis situation.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#102

Post by tibbydudeza »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #92
tibbydudeza wrote: post #88

A vaccine was developed in haste for an outbreak of swine flu in 1976 (CDC feared it was a repeat of 1918 flu) and about 45 million Americans received it but 450 people developed GBS (Guillaine-Barre Syndrome) as a result. Going on a hunch or unproven stuff is simply going to give the anti-vaxxer idiots further ammo

Taking your numbers as fact, that would be a .001% death rate. Coronavirus has a death rate ranging from .6-2% (overall), varying drastically to upwards of 20% with age. It's not a hard call to make.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-public-health-le...

An abject failure all because of one President's obsession on getting re-elected ... kind of reminds me of the current occupant in the WH.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#103

Post by gus_massa »

cameldrv wrote: post #62

We definitely want more studies, but IMO we're reaching a tipping point. We have anecdotal evidence from China and South Korea, and this quite flawed, but at least data-containing study from France. Chloroquine's safety profile isn't great, but the safety profile of COVID is way worse. If you look at Chemotherapy for example, one would never take any of those drugs unless you had cancer. COVID isn't quite as bad as c…

> but at least data-containing study from France.

Are you are talking about the study that was trendy yesterday? The control group is not randomized, and most of it was in others hospitals. They are not counting the 6 patients that they lost in the treatment group (1 just leave, 1 had too much nausea, 3 where transfer to ICU, 1 die). It is more strange that they didn't lost any patient in the control group.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#104

Post by yread »

makomk wrote: post #49
throwaway894345 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone would like to see the CDC be better funded. Hindsight makes that an obvious mistake, but monitoring C19 should have been their number one priority in any case. From January onwards it was clear that it was the number one threat. There's still no explanation (afaik) for why they rolled their own test instead of using the WHO's test, nor have they effectively communicated their plans for ramping up tes…

There seems to be a really obvious explanation of why they rolled their own test instead of using the WHO's test: there was no WHO test when they did it, the two different tests were developed in parallel (and they're not the only country which developed their own test either, there are something like seven different ones used in various countries). The CDC had already been using its own test internally when the WHO…

There was this medical person on the white house press meeting yesterday and she said that the WHO test had terrible false positive rate (she said 45% but that doesn't sound right)

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#105

Post by capableweb »

aazaa wrote: post #97

Only one clinical study has been published on chloroquine (by a French group), and the results are lackluster. No patient was cleared of virus after six days using hydroxychloroquine alone. A tiny fraction of patients were cleared in 4 days using an adjunct therapy (azithromycin). The study itself has issues, and it's not even clear whether it will clear peer review. The President is doing something very dangerous he…

> Although the drug has been used in humans for decades to treat malaria, it has not been used to any extent on humans to treat COVID-19

This isn't very weird, is it? Most people didn't start to hear about COVID-19 until January this year and many others didn't start hearing about it until people got infected in their countries.

As with everything with clinical trials, even if it seems to be helping, it'll take many months before it'll be prescribed to people for treating COVID-19

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#106

Post by wolco »

_red wrote: post #85
wolco wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The half life is 2 months. Any bad reaction will linger. Compared to antibiotics with a 8 hour half life. Lets stay home instead.

>Lets stay home instead. For a couple of weeks, fine. However on the other end of this spectrum is "Millions starve". At some point we need to ask is that fair to the youth? (note: I'm an old fart)

The recovering youth are getting breathing problems that aren't going away as well. It would be in their interest not to get it.

It's also resetting our global warming clock. Something youth were keen about getting the world to do. If they can't handle staying at home for an extended time then global warming might not be that important after all.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#107

Post by tibbydudeza »

AdmiralBumbleB wrote: post #3

This chloroquinine rush is already out of control. My pharmacy is already out of it and is unable to procure from other pharmacies (which are also out already!) My pharmacist placed orders for all her patients to prefill prescriptions (where possible) for the next few months. I can understand a shortage when there's a clear evidence-based need, but the rumour-mill hasn't even ramped to full bore yet and it's already…

You must see my family whatsapp group ... all sort of weird folk remedies and weird home made concoctions (usually harmless involving mixing garlic and flu medicine) to protect against this new virus.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#108

Post by gnulinux »

_red wrote: post #85
wolco wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The half life is 2 months. Any bad reaction will linger. Compared to antibiotics with a 8 hour half life. Lets stay home instead.

>Lets stay home instead. For a couple of weeks, fine. However on the other end of this spectrum is "Millions starve". At some point we need to ask is that fair to the youth? (note: I'm an old fart)

Youth also doesn't want to deal with this disease. I'm 23 y.o., healthy as far as I know, but I still don't want to catch this disease. Why spend 2 weeks on the bed dealing with the worst flu, risk getting hospitalized? After all, even young patients can be hospitalized, even though fatality rate is lower. I vote everyone stay home for the time being.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#109

Post by transreal »

This is pretty interesting. I've been taking Plaquenil (hydroxochloroquine) regularly for 6 months now to control an auto-immune disease, and I came down with potential symptoms of covid-19 2 weeks ago, but it was very mild - just a sore throat and cough that lasted 4 days, and I had a slight fever the first night. I self quarantined just in case, but after recovering thought I must have just caught a cold, since my symptoms were so mild. But I wonder now if I got it and if taking Plaquenil helped me recover quickly.

Too bad I can't get tested to know for sure :-(

When I started Plaquenil, the doctor told me it takes about a month or two to really build up in the blood stream to help control my condition. I wonder if the need to take it for a while also applies for Covid-19.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#110

Post by BurningFrog »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #30
altcognito wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where having a fully funded CDC and pandemic team in the US pays off. They would have been paying very close attention for weeks on end in China, Italy and South Korea and many approaches could have been already dead-ended before it even significantly reached out shores. To say nothing of actually being in the process of ramping up medications that HAVE shown to be effective. It feels like we are starting fro…

I think everyone would like to see the CDC be better funded. Hindsight makes that an obvious mistake, but monitoring C19 should have been their number one priority in any case. From January onwards it was clear that it was the number one threat. There's still no explanation (afaik) for why they rolled their own test instead of using the WHO's test, nor have they effectively communicated their plans for ramping up tes…

The problem is not the CDC developing their own test.

The problem is their banning the use of other tests for months!

Only by Dr Helen Chu finally ignoring that ban was the Seattle outbreak discovered.

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