Harvard Study: Hydroxychloroquine Or Chloroquine For COVID-19 Increased Mortality

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext

Highlight:

96 032 patients (mean age 53·8 years, 46·3% women) with COVID-19 were hospitalised during the study period and met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 14 888 patients were in the treatment groups (1868 received chloroquine, 3783 received chloroquine with a macrolide, 3016 received hydroxychloroquine, and 6221 received hydroxychloroquine with a macrolide) and 81 144 patients were in the control group. 10 698 (11·1%) patients died in hospital. After controlling for multiple confounding factors (age, sex, race or ethnicity, body-mass index, underlying cardiovascular disease and its risk factors, diabetes, underlying lung disease, smoking, immunosuppressed condition, and baseline disease severity), when compared with mortality in the control group (9·3%), hydroxychloroquine (18·0%; hazard ratio 1·335, 95% CI 1·223–1·457), hydroxychloroquine with a macrolide (23·8%; 1·447, 1·368–1·531), chloroquine (16·4%; 1·365, 1·218–1·531), and chloroquine with a macrolide (22·2%; 1·368, 1·273–1·469) were each independently associated with an increased risk of in-hospital mortality. Compared with the control group (0·3%), hydroxychloroquine (6·1%; 2·369, 1·935–2·900), hydroxychloroquine with a macrolide (8·1%; 5·106, 4·106–5·983), chloroquine (4·3%; 3·561, 2·760–4·596), and chloroquine with a macrolide (6·5%; 4·011, 3·344–4·812) were independently associated with an increased risk of de-novo ventricular arrhythmia during hospitalisation.

Interpretation
We were unable to confirm a benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, when used alone or with a macrolide, on in-hospital outcomes for COVID-19. Each of these drug regimens was associated with decreased in-hospital survival and an increased frequency of ventricular arrhythmias when used for treatment of COVID-19.
 
Not this again, where is my cup of Clorox?

TL;DA: Retrospective study is worthless.

Posted 11 days ago:


https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v1

Summary:

This is a study from NYU - on using HCQ as zinc ionophore - results were that it did not help ICU patients (which has also been reported by other recent studies of end-stage patients) i.e. it did not help end-stage patients in ICU.

However, it DID help early stage patients - for them the zinc + zinc-ionophone (HCQ) treatment helped reduce death rate i.e. helped prevent them becoming more severe.

The article also indicates that zinc alone is not likely to be successful - to get the zinc levels up to required levels you need a zinc ionophore, like HCQ (or another perhaps like Quercetin - though they don't mention Quercetin in the paper).

This is in keeping with the general understanding of HCQ + zinc action - that it needs to be presented soon after first symptoms, and well before the cytokine storm (which typically happens 7-10 days after first symptoms).
 
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