Hydroxychloroquine fails in largest COVID-19 drugs

Kampala, Uganda |  THE INDEPENDENT |  Hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug that has been touted as a game changer in treatment of Corona Virus Disease COVID-19 has failed in another trial, the biggest so  far to be conducted globally.

Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists led by a team at Columbia University found that people infected with COVID-19 taking hydroxychloroquine do not fare better than those not receiving the drug.

They studied more than 1300 patients who were admitted at New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia University Irving Medical Centre with COVID-19.

In his write up for the journal, Dr Neil Schluger, chief of the division of pulmonary, allergy and critical care medicine at Columbia who led the research team explains that 60 per cent  of the patients received the drug for about five days and others didn’t receive treatment.

He said those that received the drug just like those that didn’t still needed support of ventilators and also died at almost the same rate, recommending that it’s not reasonable for patients critically ill with the respiratory disease to continue being given the drug as there’s currently no rationale.

After the initial study done in France showed that the drug had some bit of efficacy, many researchers embarked on studying it and countries including the US where a lot of people were getting infected and dying started using it.

But, many of the studies that followed showed no difference in recovery for patients treated with it.

For instance, one study conducted last month in the US showed 28 per cent of patients treated with the drug succumbed to the infection and had higher death rates than those that were not given the medicine.

For all the previous studies, the limitation has always been on the numbers as they enrolled very few participants.

However, while the latest study which is by far the largest did not randomly assign people to receive the drug or placebo and compare their outcomes, the researchers say the large number of patients involved suggests the findings are solid.

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