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Chloroquine, past and present

blogs.sciencemag.org

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Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#131

Post by cm2187 »

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…

Mostly it is a tiny tiny little fraction of the economic cost of a prolonged lockdown.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#132

Post by mytailorisrich »

arrrg wrote: post #98
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…

The study from France seems to suck, though. Not very valuable data. They measured virus, not outcomes, they measured virus in the throat, not the lungs, the starting point was not the start of the disease but some later (more arbitrary) point in time, the two groups were not randomly assigned and the study wasn’t really blind. It could be that they just happened to compare two groups where the treatment group was fu…

On the 26th February, in an interview, one of the researchers behind the French study said that he wasn't worried about Covid-19 and that it was just a flu...

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#133

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

m0zg wrote: post #118
gnulinux wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> Why spend 2 weeks To acquire immunity while there are still hospital beds available in some places, in the unlikely event that you need one. That won't be the case a month from now.

How utterly and inconceivably selfish. How would that work out if everyone thought like that?

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#134

Post by cm2187 »

ginko wrote: post #112
milofeynman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Permanent blindness typically takes many weeks / years of use. https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-8633/chloroquine-oral/det...

Which might be necessary for prophylactic use.

You only need to mitigate the peak of infections from this virus. And I don’t think anyone is suggesting it to be used as a preventive tool. It is to reduce the contagiousness of people tested positive (and hopefully also help them with the virus).

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#135

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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

That's a pretty good rate, ~10x GBS than you would expect deaths from regular flu.

GBS is listed as a side-effect of UK's Fluenztetra flu shot IIRC. Most people reportedly fully recover from GBS.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#136

Post by stevespang »

Derek's column does not ever post my responses (censorship ?) so here it is:

The side effects of chloroquine are modest for most, especially on a 10 days or less regimen. Approx. 5% or higher risk of NOT taking it when ill from coronavirus it is you could end up in ICU on a ventilator, on the other hand, the risk of taking it and getting serious side effects is minimal, like at about 1.5% in the study below.

Google this title: Reported Side Effects to Chloroquine, Chloroquine plus Proguanil, and Mefloquine as Chemoprophylaxis against Malaria in Danish Travelers

Summary: 85% of Danish travelers reported no side effects

minor side effects are:

Diarrhea, stomach pain (take only with a full meal), dizziness

the depression / anxiety incident was ONE person - - we don't base science on what happen to ONE person.

severe side effects in only 1.5% of cases

Only LONG TERM USE for many months or years can have retina involvement.

So all those who want to bash the multiple recent published research results showing good results with chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for COVID19 - - - maybe I'll read about you in morgue statistics somewhere soon. I have already got my 'script for chloroquine (cost me 70 cents total), I am ready and prepared - - - instead of being a naysayer with my head in the sand.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#137

Post by cm2187 »

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…

It only needs to reduce the viral load significantly to become a better alternative to killing the economy with a lockdown.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#138

Post by save_ferris »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #119
ggm wrote: post #76

I think the drug combinations are going to turn out to be as important as the single instances. One to bind to receptors. One to limit related infection risk. One to be an anti-pyretic. This is how HIV was fought, with cocktails. Single drug treatment comes later. Chloroquine is a powerful drug. It needs to be treated with respect. Yes it is cheap. it also has effects on the mind and we don't need a wave a psychosis…

We've already weathered at least one wave of panic induced psychosis. From panic buyers, to Congress members using privileged information to blatantly sell stock just before the first crash.

Neither of those are examples of psychosis. Overreactions to unusual instability in our society? Sure, but hyperbolic comparisons like this muddy the waters around what psychosis is.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#139

Post by stevespang »

gumby wrote: post #91
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…

> 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…

>"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".

EXACTLY - - and chemotherapy has MUCH WORSE side effects than simple chloroquine, used for >70 years, never "recalled".

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#140

Post by cm2187 »

gnulinux wrote: post #61
andreygrehov wrote: post #19

Does anyone have any information about the Favipiravir testing going on in China? From what I read, it has a 90% success rate treating coronavirus AND is a super safe drug in general.

I read this X% success rate for many drugs, Remdesivir, chloroquine etc... What does it mean? Giving no drug, just ventilator alone has 97% success rate right? So how do we know that that 90% is due to the drug and not, you know, immune system itself? Moreover, a lot of people keep saying both Remdesivir and chloroquine are in official treatment suggestions in Italy, and seeing Italy is suffering a pretty bad mortali…

In the case of the french study, the timing is a key thing. Lower viral load quickly = less contagious = inserting grains of sand in the propagation of the virus and if the numbers add up, hopefully a non-economy nuking alternative to lock downs.
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