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Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

medrxiv.org

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Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the paper: A total of 63 patients were included with 32 in the hydroxychloroquine arm. Hydroxychloroquine administration was associated with a need for escalation of respiratory support level compared to those that did not receive hydroxychloroquine at 5 days (p=0.013). The same findings were observed in a baseline-matched subgroup analysis. Absolute lymphocyte change in the hydroxychloroquine group was no diffe…

p=0.413 p=0.51 So, basically coin toss?

You overlooked the major finding of the study:

> Hydroxychloroquine administration was associated with a need for escalation of respiratory support level compared to those that did not receive hydroxychloroquine at 5 days (p=0.013).

> p = 0.013

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#152
Why is it taking so long to do a big study on this?

There are so many sick people and it’s a cheap drug and only takes a week Or 2 to see if it works.

Can someone please just do a Really large trial, like, 2 weeks ago so we can put this to bed one way or the other.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#154
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HCQ is an off-patent drug that is produced in every major country in the world. In fact, many countries have stockpiles of it because of its efficacy at preventing malaria. If there’s a risk of a supply run, it would definitely not last very long. For many people there’s alternatives for treating arthritis and lupus. If it’s shown even to improve the patient’s outcome by even just 10% or more (as this study suggests)…

Face masks have been shown to be effective at controlling pandemics, and apparently no one (in many western countries) thought to stockpile those.

Facemasks are only produced in a handful of countries. In fact we basically don’t even have the skill set or machinery here to convert factories to producing facemask even if we wanted to. Garment work was moved offshore decades ago.

Unlike off-patent prescription drugs.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#155

Personally I'm witholding judgment until the results of the PATCH trial ( https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04329923 ) arrive, as it'll finally give us some decent statistical power, and be a full, double-blind RCT. It also has multiple study arms (health-care worker prophylaxis, home-quarantined early stage, hospitalized later-stage), so if it turns out that HCQ is effective but that by the time patients are ho…

Yeah, the devil is really in the details about exactly when and how you administer it. Doctors are already saying that it's definitely no magic bullet, but they debate whether it is effective at a certain stage of illness. What I don't understand is why we're focusing so much on this specific drug when there are some great antivirals out thee that have a more effective theoretical mechanism of action. (eg Remdesivir)

Because it's easy to make, there's tons of it lying around already, and it doesn't need human safety trials (we already know safe dosages). If it works, it'll be a near-miracle.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#156
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "no evidence of efficacy" does not imply evidence of no efficacy That's incorrect. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It's just not proof of absence. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mnS2WYLCGJP2kQkRn/absence-of...

The parent states: > "no evidence of efficacy" does not imply evidence of no efficacy, and in fact the uncertainty in this study is quite large. The sample size is small enough that it would be very hard for this study to detect the effect of hydroxychloroquine unless that effect is very, very large. What you're saying might be correct but misses the point of the parent (and perhaps statistics) completely.

[deleted]

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#157

While we're here, "Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Treatment of Patients Infected with 2019-New Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2): A Review and Perspective" ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7098036/ ) Hey, it can't hurt and it might help. China has had one of the best recoveries from the pandemic.

Thanks for sharing this, not sure why you're getting downvoted. TCM has its place, Artemisia Annua has been used as an anti-malarial treatment as well for hundreds of years, and again, is cheap, available, and side effects are known. I've had anecdotal experience that it's helpful for milder coronavirus symptoms.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#158

It really bothers me how hard both citizens and officials seem to be wanting Chloroquine to fail all because somebody they didn't like endorsed it publicly. Can't let him have that win, right? Like children. The original studies that showed promise used combinations of Chloroquine, Azithromycin, and or zinc, and there is a speculated pathway by which these drugs interact to interfere with COVID replication. This stud…

I think there's a bunch of strawmen here. It's disingenuous to say that people who found [said person]'s comments to be a bad idea want it to fail . Indeed, if that person had come up and said "there's a lot of promising treatments, such as ..." or "the experts are telling us that some studies involving [x, y, z] are showing some positive signs" or something of that ilk, nobody would have cared. Instead, the person m…

>https://youtu.be/oWQjWepaDv0

"Very promising early results".

>https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+tweet+chloroquine&prmd...

"Have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers"

Meanwhile the media response has been universally lamenting that a president would "tell people" [he didn't] to take this drug. How many outlets jumped on the single chloroquine phosphate overdose as proof of the president's responsibility? I encourage you to search "Trump" and "chloroquine" and find me a single headline that doesn't tear into Trump.

Like most people, your views have been warped by headlines and op-eds being touted as "news."

The fact that the president acts like a child doesn't mean our news should too. The petty editorialization of the daily briefings are an excellent example - the media's job in such a case is to be an objective first source - not to force their point of view through adversarial headlines that change every 5 seconds and "fact checking" only his alleged untruths. But this is where the majority of Americans get their news. It's shameful.

Edit: hell, look at this absolutely ridiculous headline at the top of the CNN "fact check" page: "Fact check: Trump denies saying another thing he said and makes more false claims at coronavirus briefing"

What kind of headline is that? Is anyone competent left at CNN? The media no longer deserves the soft power it wields. They lost that privilege when they strayed so far from any semblance of objectivity.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#159
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydroxycholorquine is an immunosuppresant not an anti-viral, so the theory here is the problem isn't the virus, but reacting to it. It's not quite as silly as it sounds - this does, rarely, work, specifically with malaria. But, it is pretty silly when you contrast the likelihood of it being a meaningful thereapeutic versus the significance it's taken on

From my understanding it does something to the virus membrane which then allows a high dose of zinc to actually disrupt the virus. I think the antibiotic component is to suppress risk of a secondary infection due to the suppressant effect.

I have heard (provenance rating: "rumour") that it's only effective when taken in conjunction with zinc supplementation.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#160
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem wasn't that Trump encouraged trying it, but that he clearly exaggerated what we knew about its effects and continued to do so for a long time even after having been confronted about it.

Trumps history of exaggeration goes before and anyone sane accounts for it.

I can personally discount everything he says, that doesn't make it any less legitimate to say that the President of the United States shouldn't hold press conferences in which he over-hypes the proven effectiveness of certain drugs during a pandemic.

Otherwise anyone can just claim anything whenever they want without any proof whatsoever.

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