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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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent reports about low benefits of HCQ didn't stop Raoult from appearing in a video about the state of HCQ and covid-19 in his clinic. Sadly he seems to be yet again using very wide statistics to justify his views (covid is of no importance compared to yearly stats [0]) and digress into political attacks (his past interactions with pharma labs that weren't conflict of interests). I still can't say if he's a low…

Even pre-covid, Raoult had a reputation for pumping out hundreds of really poor quality studies and making controversial public claims. It's a shame he's the one that's caught the attention of the general public, there's lots of good work going on with other potential treatments, but suddenly my social media is filled with armchair pharmacologists arguing about this one drug.

That's the issue, it seems that to conclude on its case would mean discrediting the whole publication structure (system too easy to rig by flooding)

I wish medias would do broader panels to discuss varied POVs rather than one ~icon.

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problems with the way this test was set up. It was a quick study that would have told us quickly if there was a huge benefit from HCQ. That wasn't the outcome. Larger tests with better statistical power will tell us if there is a smaller positive effect. My point is, the smaller the beneficial effect, the larger the test will have to be to find it, but also the lower the overall benefit to patients. Again,…

My immediate reaction was that I would not expect to see an effect if you are giving HCQ to patients after they have been hospitalized by the virus. You are now into the inflamation/cytokine storm phase of COVID-19. The best chance of HCQ working is very early, ideally before or directly after exposure. The jury is still out if you take HCQ after the onset of sympthoms if that is also too late. Based on this in-vitro…

The French study (which kicked off the whole interest in this) was done after hospital admission.

(It was also mostly junk science of course too)

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

#353

This whole debate is insane to me -- some people that so-called "experts" don't like mentioned HCQ as a possible treatment for coronavirus, and we've ended up in some bizarro world where everyone is shouting and fingers are being pointed over something that really shouldn't be controversial or perceived as some sinister plot to destroy clever society. 1. HCQ has been used for many decades 2. The side effects are gene…

> ...this should certainly be tried as a treatment... What? Why not try literally anything and everything else that has not been proven?

When faced with death as an alternative? Of course! The hypocrisy is that all the shouters and screamers would likely make the decision to try HCQ if it was them in that situation.

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

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Thanks for sharing this, not sure why you're getting downvoted. Because TCM is - charitably - pseudoscience. Many of its remedies involve grinding up endangered animals into concoctions that have no plausible mechanism of treating the thing they're meant to treat. > I've had anecdotal experience that it's helpful for milder coronavirus symptoms. I have anecdotal experience that my microsorium musifolium plant has b…

You are mindreading my comment of "TCM has its place" and are wrongly confusing it in your own imagination of "used to make public health decisions". Please don't do that, it's insulting to folks trying to have open discussions, and it also makes you, the mindreader, stressed and anxious about things that are not happening.

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As insane as that is. And how funny is it (at least to me) that this is only because Trump came down on one side initially. If he had come out saying exactly the opposite, that HCQ was bad and we should be skeptical, everyone hoping it doesn’t work now would be looking for the 10 person studies saying it totally works and defending its use. It’s almost beyond reason how hyper partisan this specific issue is.

The fundamental difference is that one side is backed by neutral experts such as Anthony Fauci and the other side has shown nothing but disdain for science in countless issues (global warming, evolution, election fraud, etc).

Sorry, I don’t buy into pole riding / hero worship, nor do I believe that theoretical-you on the theoretical-“other side” wouldn’t have an equal but opposing argument.

It’s all game, do you really not see that? ... If you’ve been following this topic, shouldn’t you be able to make the steelman argument for it?

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

#356
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe my citations answer your questions sufficiently. Since the questions #1 and #2 can be answered both "yes" and "no", with equal merit, I suggest that perhaps they are not useful questions. That is, not every pharmacy in every country is out, and sometimes a pharmacy is out of a medicine. If that's what you mean by "universal" and "local shortage before" then you're being absurd. Bear in mind that I was answe…

I think characterizing my questions as absurd is itself revealing of a bias. There is no judgment in my questions, I'm just trying to get at the answers.

I did not characterize your questions as absurd. I pointed out that your first two questions can be answered both "yes" and "no" with equal validity, and presented the absurd case to demonstrate why.

Did you really mean "universal" to mean every pharmacy in the world, and did you really mean "Have there been shortages" to include a single pharmacy somewhere running out? No. But how am I supposed to know what you do mean?

Your questions did not seem informed by the information in the links I presented, which suggests a different sort of bias.

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

#357
400+ points on Hackernews for... this?

There have been a variety of studies and reports, both for and against, the use of hydroxychloroquine. Is there any reason this particular study is so highly upvoted? Or is this just an attempt to dunk on Trump for suggesting the drug showed promise?

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

#358
post #43

Lots of conflicting research happening[1], until we get multiple controlled trials we won't really know. Here's one that shows improvements. [1] French ~50 patient study that tried Control, Hydroxychloroquine, and Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin combo: https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/hydroxychloroquine-an...

> Lots of conflicting research happening That's my main take-away at this point. I have seen enough reports saying it worked, and enough saying it didn't that I believe the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. My understanding is the best guess for how it works is by keeping the viral infection from becoming serious enough to require hospitalization. Similar to how proper treatment of wounds early on keeps the…

> That's my main take-away at this point. I have seen enough reports saying it worked, and enough saying it didn't that I believe the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

The initial study indicating HCQ was effective was recently withdrawn by the publisher for failing to meet their journal's publishing standards [1]. And for good reason, as the study conveniently dropped patients that deteriorated from their final numbers. None of the follow up studies I have seen (including the one in the OP) have shown anywhere near the same level of effectiveness.

> Unfortunately, politics. So the Left wants it to be completely no use at all

That is such a twisted, uncharitable interpretation of the situation that I have to wonder if it is intentional. Do you really think "the Left" would rather have the drug be completely ineffective so the entire planet has to keep this lockdown going? Really?

I guarantee you every single fucking person on this planet, left, right, or center, would love to have an effective drug against this virus right now.

The primary point I've seen made by "the Left" on this matter is the President of the United States should not be tweeting out unproven drug combinations until their efficacy has been demonstrated by clinical trials. Particularly when: 1) such drug combinations can potentially increase the risk of heart failure [2], and 2) people rushing out to buy these drugs has constrained the supply for patients who actually need it to treat their existing illnesses.

Unfortunately, politics, indeed. The world has gone insane when the position of "don't taken unproven drugs with risky side effects without medical supervision" is construed as a "leftist position" instead of COMMON SENSE.

[1] https://www.isac.world/news-and-publications/official-isac-s...

[2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.20054551v...

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

#359

400+ points on Hackernews for... this? There have been a variety of studies and reports, both for and against, the use of hydroxychloroquine. Is there any reason this particular study is so highly upvoted? Or is this just an attempt to dunk on Trump for suggesting the drug showed promise?

It’s a study with a fairly high number of participants and it has not been conducted by the controversial author of the flawed first study.

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers" and "Hopefully both will be used immediately. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST" Both seem pretty ridiculous when we don't even know if its effective at all, let alone "one of the biggest game changers".

There were multiple papers out of Europe and China by then. This was already floating around before Trump latched onto it because it was indeed promising, which is exactly what Trump said. What else do you think the words "hopefully" and "real chance" are here to communicate? What do you think "move fast" means? Administer the cure to everyone, or figure out if it works? This was a clearly promising avenue and as the…

It's neither vitriol nor irrational to expect a leader to yield to experts and to relay only reliable information.

What he did instead lacked context or information necessary to mass communicate. There's a way to communicate it and it wasn't this.

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