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Chloroquine, past and present

blogs.sciencemag.org

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Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#191

Post by barbs »

mcguire wrote: post #155
axguscbklp wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not suggesting immediately starting to dose millions of people with it. I'm suggesting massively ramping up production so that if it turns out to be useful, we can at that point immediately start dosing millions of people with it. I think it likely that the cost of massively increasing hydroxychloroquine production would be a drop in the bucket compared to the total resources being spent on tackling the crisis. S…

Note that if hydroxychloroquine is not effective, your production facilities will be tied up if you do find something else that is effective.

Stop making shit up, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#192

Post by hpkuarg »

kec wrote: post #158
easytiger wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Because that vast majority of cases are mold or asymptomatic.

"mild" means "you probably have pneumonia, just not bad enough that it could suddenly kill you, so you don't need to be in the hospital (yet?)"

Not the GP, but "mild" probably actually means mild. Given that only (highly) symptomatic people are tested, we don't know how many people contracted the virus and only had mild cold symptoms. Developing pneumonia would already put you outside of that "mild" designation.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#193

Post by entee »

red-indian wrote: post #187
taneq wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon the dumb question, but has anyone just tried quinine? I've been wondering if a hefty gin and tonic would help matters.

I'm taking it, I've also got my family and neighbors on it. I was unable to convince doctors since February to take me seriously that hydroxychloroquine is likely to have prophylactic effects so I took matters into my own hands. I know what I'm doing. Those who don't know what they are doing should not just jump in since they need to manage and understand the dose, the drug interactions, and the side effects. None of…

I think you’re missing one of the key parts of the article: be careful. Mass administration of a drug is dangerous. As you mention early in your post, you know what you’re doing, I take you at your word. But a drug with known serious side effects shouldn’t be mass distributed without clear benefit. Studies so far are encouraging but tiny and noisy sample size. We’ll get better data soon.

Even then, if it proves effective in symptomatic cases, it’s unclear prophylactic use is called for. More sensible to administer to those with current symptoms. If truly effective this would lower fatalities and keep ICUs from being overwhelmed.

Finally, the most recent French study suggests a combination with azithromycin is the actual effective treatment. We just don’t know enough yet, we will soon, let’s be responsible.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#195

Post by qes »

pbreit wrote: post #175
axguscbklp wrote: post #72

It seems to me that we should immediately move to massively increase production of hydroxychloroquine. If it turns out to be part of a solution, great. If not, I doubt that more than a tiny fraction of the total resources dedicated to the pandemic would have been used up by the effort. There is no time to take things slowly in our situation. In any case, from what I've read on places like r/medicine, many people who…

Supply is not an issue: https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/new-commitments-mylan-an... We need testing that the medical community will accept.

> Supply is not an issue

Well, I was going to order some, been researching for a couple days before buying, and in that time all stock on my known pharmacy sites is now gone.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#197

Post by jennyyang »

cameldrv wrote: post #141
gumby wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The FDA's Office of new drugs is split into divisions (dermatology, oncology etc) and the different divisions have different approval criteria as you mention. From my Onco friends' PoV, cancer patients are pretty much assumed…

I appreciate an expert opinion here. What do you think is the actual rate of adverse events from Chloloroquine, and of what severity?

One of the comments in the article:

I prescribe Plaquenil extensively in patients with autoimmune conditions.The safety profile of this drug is excellent. It is also still used for malaria prophylaxis in healthy individuals .it is not a new drug. I don’t see the reason of labeling it as dangerous. The question is : does it work for Covid19 prevention and treatment? The answer is “the current limited evidence suggests that it does”. What i can tell you that I am aware of a number of doctors in the US who are currently infected or waiting for results who are taking the drug. And I cannot blame them.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#198

Post by Judson »

jschwartzi wrote: post #190
Judson wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great that we’re looking at the same study! I’m not sure what you mean by: “No patient was cleared of virus after six days using hydroxychloroquine alone.“ Because the percentages there are 57% Of patients on HCQ alone we’re cleared, vs 12% control.

Is there sufficient evidence in favor of rejecting the null hypothesis, that 57% of patients in the HCQ study group would have gone on to spontaneously recover without HCQ? Because that's the really interesting question. It's not a question of the study group versus control group, it's a question of whether the study group and control group had enough characteristics in common to make them statistically equivalent sa…

A fair criticism of the study, but does not make the case that “no patient on HCQ alone was virus free by day 6”, since that is objectively false by my reading.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#199

Post by jennyyang »

axaxs wrote: post #146
transreal wrote: post #109

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…

Please remember that greater than 90 percent of people who have covid like symptoms test negative. So while there's a chance you had it and recovered, it's very small. Stay safe and assume you're still vulnerable.

90% of tests reported negative. If someone is tested, they need to take 2 tests. If someone is tested positive, they need to be tested until they get 2 negative tests in a row. So the numbers are very skewed.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#200

Post by axaxs »

jennyyang wrote: post #199
axaxs wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please remember that greater than 90 percent of people who have covid like symptoms test negative. So while there's a chance you had it and recovered, it's very small. Stay safe and assume you're still vulnerable.

90% of tests reported negative. If someone is tested, they need to take 2 tests. If someone is tested positive, they need to be tested until they get 2 negative tests in a row. So the numbers are very skewed.

This is good info. Are you suggesting that most people would get 3 tests...a confirmation, then after x weeks 2 negatives, skewing the number potentially up to max ~66% testing negative even for people with the virus?
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