Before anyone accuses me again of being "happy" about this... I'm not.
Let me reiterate, my position has always been that efficacy and safety needs to be comprehensively established by correctly designed clinical trials before mass distribution is approved. Those clinical trials are ongoing.
No Evidence of Rapid Antiviral Clearance or Clinical Benefit with the Combination of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin in Patients with Severe COVID-19 Infection
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0399077X20300858?via%3DihubA second French group, led by Jean-Michel Molina, has now tested the hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin combination treatment in 11 patients at the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris, France, and their results were strikingly different.
Like the Marseille study, the Molina trial was also a small pilot study. Molina and colleagues used the same dosing regimen as Gautret. In contrast, however, to the Gautret study, eight of the 11 patients had underlying health conditions, and 10 of 11 had fevers and were quite ill at the time the dosing began.
These Paris researchers found that after five to six days of treatment with hydroxychloroquine (600 mg per day for 10 days) and azithromycin (500 mg on day 1 and 250 mg on days 2 to 5), eight of the 10 patients still tested positive for COVID-19. Of these 10 patients, one patient died, two were transferred to the ICU and another had to be removed from the treatment due to serious complications.
In addition, a similar study in China also showed no difference in viral clearance after seven days either with or without the hydroxychloroquine with the patients in the trial. This supports Molina’s findings.
Thus, despite the recent approval of this drug for use against COVID-19, questions remain as to the efficacy of this treatment.
As Molina and colleagues note: “Ongoing randomized clinical trials with hydroxychloroquine should provide a definitive answer regarding the alleged efficacy of this combination and will assess its safety.”
https://news.yahoo.com/small-trial-finds-hydroxychloroquine-not-124054137.html
