Hydroxychloroquine study

A major study of the way hydroxychloroquine and its older version, chloroquine, have been used on six continents – without clinical trials – reveals a sobering picture. Scientists said the results meant the drug should no longer be given to Covid-19 patients except in proper research settings.

While the paper, published online in the Lancet medical journal, is not a trial designed to assess the drug, it shows that the rush to use it around the world may be ill-advised. Significant numbers of doctors have been prescribing it without evidence. It is known that the drug can cause heart irregularities, but many have claimed it is safe because of its long use treating malaria.

  Guardian

If by many you mean the Trump cabal.

There was a rush to use the drug in Covid-19 cases after the French doctor Didier Raoult said he was curing his patients at La Timone hospital, in Marseille. The US president then claimed hydroxychloroquine – less toxic than the original chloroquine – was a cure, and later said he was taking it himself against coronavirus.

The drugs are fairly safe for patients being treated for malaria, but Covid-19 is a very different disease. The authors of the paper pulled together results for more than 96,000 patients in 671 hospitals, taking one of the drugs, with or without an antibiotic such as azithromycin, between 20 December and 14 April.

The death rate among all groups taking the drugs was higher than among people who were not given them. One in six of those taking one of the drugs died, while one in five died if they were taking chloroquine with an antibiotic, and one in four if they were on hydroxychloroquine and an antibiotic. The death rate among patients not taking the drugs was one in 11.

The statistics are not exactly comparable because, as this was not a trial, there were differences in the age, gender, general health and stage of illness of the patients.

[...]

The team also found that serious cardiac arrhythmias, which cause the lower chamber of the heart to beat rapidly and irregularly, were more common in all the groups receiving one of the four treatment regimens. The biggest increase was in the group treated with hydroxychloroquine in combination with an antibiotic, where 8% of patients developed a heart arrhythmia compared with 0.3% of patients not given the drugs.

[...]

“Whilst controlled trials will be required for confident affirmation, the indications are that these drugs certainly ought not to be used outside of a trial setting where patients can be monitored for complications. One might also question whether the resources necessary for large studies might be better diverted to other causes, at the same time allowing the drugs themselves to be used for their original purpose.

“Furthermore, it is clear that high-profile endorsements of taking these drugs without clinical oversight are both misguided and irresponsible.”

That's our president: misguided and irresponsible. Not to mention ignorant and cruel.

It is definitely a waste of time and resources, not to mention irresponsible, to conduct trials (assuming you can find enough voluntary human guinea pigs), for covid-19 purposes when the study already shows the more likely negative - and fatal - results.

“It might even be said that to go on giving them, other than in a trial, is unethical, given this evidence that is not yet contradicted by other available evidence.”

Yeah. Unethical.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.