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Medicine Science

World's Biggest Trial of Drug To Treat Covid-19 Begins in UK (theguardian.com) 141

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
The world's biggest trial of drugs to treat Covid-19 patients has been set up in the UK at unprecedented speed, and hopes to have some answers within weeks. From a report: The Recovery trial has recruited over 5,000 patients in 165 NHS hospitals around the UK in a month, ahead of similar trials in the US and Europe, which have a few hundred. "This is by far the largest trial in the world," said Peter Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health at Oxford University, who is leading it. He has previously led Ebola drug trials in west Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Recovery team expects to be the first to have definitive data. "We're guessing some time in June we may get the results," said Prof Horby. "If it is really clear that there are benefits, an answer will be available quicker." But he warned that in the case of Covid-19, there would be no "magic bullet."
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World's Biggest Trial of Drug To Treat Covid-19 Begins in UK More

World's Biggest Trial of Drug To Treat Covid-19 Begins in UK

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  • Hydroxychloroquine (Score:3, Informative)

    by CubicleZombie ( 2590497 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @12:12PM (#59958560)

    Isn't that the same medication that you all blasted Trump for suggesting?

    • Re:Hydroxychloroquine (Score:5, Funny)

      by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @12:20PM (#59958606)

      Dude, that's not in the summary.

      HE READ THE ARTICLE! GET HIM!

      • Dude, that's not in the summary.

        HE READ THE ARTICLE! GET HIM!

        I would, but he didn't seem to get the gist of the article so he gets a mulligan on this one.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      Isn't that the same medication that you all blasted Trump for suggesting?

      No. It's the medication that we blasted Trump for saying works despite no clinical trial being completed. It's the same medication that I'm now blasting you for seeing how you jumped to Trumps defense for a) not understanding what the situation is, and b) being just as dumb and presumptuous as he is.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        Hope you know that during pandemics, clinical trials don't happen when the bodies are filling up refrigerated truck trailers and ice rinks are used for storage. I find it far more interesting at just how hard and fast people like yourself(and the media) flip out over it because Trump mentioned it, despite there not being a problem with it when other countries were doing the same thing and touting it. And yes, they were touting it long before Trump said anything.

        It's almost like your irrational hate is so

        • Clinical trials are how you know whether something actually works. Humans are *incredibly* bad at figuring such things out reliably without rigorous scientific analysis - that's why science exists and has ushered in such rapid technological innovation. Our brains are wired for anecdotal reasoning, aka superstition, because until a few thousand years ago that was really the only option we had.

          A pandemic is a good reason to fast-track such trials, but without them it's just desperate doctors hoping maybe th

        • Hope you know that during pandemics you still perform clinical trails (albeit smaller ones) so that you don't pile up vast amounts of more dead bodies when it turns out that the drugs that you tried had some adverse side effects for the group of patients that where also affected by the decease. Hydroxychloroquine is one such drug since it has know lethal side effects for people with heart problems and people with heart problems have also a higher chance of getting sever sick from covid-19.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Mashiki ( 184564 )

            Funny thing with quinine medications is we know two things, they stop over aggressive immune responses. We know they induce different elements directly into cells which stop or inhibit parasitic or viral growth within the cell. Hope you know that hydroxychloroquine's lethal side effects are below the average rate for heart damage compared to most commonly prescribed ACE/ACE2 blood pressure medications by nearly 20% No? Well, plenty of time to learn, unless you're like me and are still working for a livin

            • And that they had to prematurely stop the clinical trails of hydroxychloroquine due to an increased death rate for covid-19 patients compared with the control group just shows again how straight out dangerous and idiotic your first post was. The lethal side effect rates that you are talking about is for doses way lower than what was needed to affect the sars-cov2 virus but hey just lets ignore that since great leader Trump promoted something....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Sorry but what the fuck? When did he say it works?

        Shit, even a shoddy biased hitpiece trying to call him a liar doesn't even claim that:
        https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

    • The trial seems to involve several different treatments.
    • The problem was suggestign and touting the drug as some sort of miracle cure, likely to work, instead of waiting for scientists to figure things out. And that caused real disruption. Notice also that this study isn't just about Hydroxychloroquine but is very much about trying every possible thing that might work. From the article linked in the summary:

      Also in the trial now are a combination of two antiretroviral drugs used in HIV treatment, lopinavir-ritonavir, known by the brand name Kaletra, and low-dose dexamethasone, a type of steroid used in a range of conditions, typically to reduce inflammation.

      The next one to be included, said Horby, is an interleukin 6 antagonist, one of the immunomodulator drugs used in rheumatoid arthritis and to treat cytokine storm – something that happens when the immune system goes into overdrive, as can happen in Covid-19. They are looking at tocilizumab.

      They are also in discussions about introducing convalescent plasma – blood from people who have recovered that contains antibodies against the virus. They want to trial remdesivir, but have not been able to obtain the stocks they need, because it is being tested in China and the US and because doctors are already prescribing it on compassionate use grounds.

    • Isn't that the same medication that you all blasted Trump for suggesting?

      It is. Because most of us, from a rationale perspective, are hoping this drug works, and want to see it tested scientifically, in carefully, controller trials to be sure of things like it's efficacy, the proper dosage, it's side effects, etc. I wasn't so much against the drug as I was against "try it, what do you have to lose", especially in light of some of the limited studies which showed higher doses may cause more harm than good, other studies which showed limited effects what-so-ever, and some random a

    • Isn't that the same medication that you all blasted Trump for suggesting?

      Among others, yes. Moderated -1, Wrongthink.

    • In fairness, HCQ was suggested back in H5N1 days for that. And the thing about HCQ is that it shows a lot of promise in vitro, but in trails it usually doesn't pan out. From the article.

      “I would say no,” said Horby. “There is in-vitro evidence that it is inhibitory against the virus [in the lab]. But I haven’t seen any sound clinical data. “We’re seeing a large number of publications. It’s hard to keep up with them. Most of them are very disappointing. There was a paper that said it was a breakthrough – chloroquine works. But there was zero data in it. It seems to follow in that vein. They show a certain percentage of patients recovering, which would happen anyway.”

      This isn't the first time China has suggested HCQ as treatment based solely on in lab. Every time thus far it's shown to be "not as good as the current protocol" in vivo. Now all I am saying is this. We've been down this road before of China suggesting HCQ. Every time it has resulted in not that great results. I mean

  • I did RTFA. It has little to no information of value.

    "They're testing a bunch of drugs in a bunch of trials. Some that Trump likes and some others"

    Waste of time.

    • The fact that this (as of the time of this comment) isn't rated +ten million informative is clearly a sign that mods need to catch up.

  • The original claim was that the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin has a strong beneficial effect. This study is ONLY testing them separately.

    What is WRONG with these people? Haven't they ever heard of synergy?

    Fortunately there are a lot of other studies [laboratoryequipment.com] going on.

    • I doubt the best practice is to start with a cocktail (in clinical trials rather than parties)?

      • I doubt the best practice is to start with a cocktail (in clinical trials rather than parties)?

        If the claim is the two drug combination A and B is doing the trick, it seems to me that having groups for drug A, drug B, and control, but none for drug A AND drug B, doesn't make any sense.

        It's not like "The largest clinical trial" doesn't have enough subjects to do this.

        It's also not like the "cocktail" has six ingredients (in which case testing them all individually while ignoring the combination makes even LE

        • And this guy says you have to add Zinc to the HCL and Z-pack:

          https://abc7.com/health/doctor... [abc7.com]

          What's going to happen is that the pointy-haired are going to take this and test it for 2 years, while 2 million more people die, and then they're going to step out and say "Good news. Our tests show that this combination of drugs would have cured these 2 million people."

          At this point the mob of bereaved next of kin will rush forward, seize the pointy-hairs, make millions selling pay-per-view of their lynching to

    • Anti-neoplastic drugs (cancer fighters, in common parlance) combine synergisticly. Criticism not totally absurd.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Its the UK. Test paying for each products. The then UK gov only has to buy one result in bulk.
      Test for "synergy" and that could see two results to have to buy in bulk. Expensive extra spending for a nation like the UK.
      Dont test the "synergy" and its always going to be one result.
      One test, a set of results per test, one approved good result, one product for the UK gov to have to buy in bulk.
      Never approve a test that could get a result that costs more than a nation can afford to later approve.
      Thats h

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Sigh. No, the UK will seek an effective treatment. These trials will help inform that.

        If there are multiple viable treatments, cost will indeed be a factor in which to adopt. At the moment there are not, so cost is not the primary driver.

        Advanced nations

        While I'm not going to pretend the UK is perfect, and can indeed highlight many flaws in the NHS, you'd have to be a fucking moron to pretend that the UK isn't as advanced as any other nation.

  • What drug? (Score:4)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @01:29PM (#59959028) Journal

    Is it too much to ask what drug be mentioned in the summary?

    Or would that be a game changer? ;)

  • My money is still on it's no better than wearing a green baseball cap and having waffles for breakfast. My prediction: statistically insignificant impact on COVID and > 30% withdraw early due to significant side effects.

    • That's because the curative colour is yellow, everyone knows that!

      So your green baseball cap has been diluted with blue. If you get rid of the diluent and wear a yellow baseball cap it will work so much better (or, you could wear four green baseball caps all at the same time to up the concentration of the effective ingredient, being the yellow.

      Also, you need to make sure that the waffles are Aunt Jemmima brand as the others don't work as well.

      Stopping intake of all fluids for 21 days has also proven curati

  • The summary didn't say which medicine is under trial. It looks like they will start with a few [recoverytrial.net], and once they have results on those, will add others later. These are the drugs they are looking at:

    * Lopinavir-Ritonavir (commonly used to treat HIV)
    *Low-dose Dexamethasone (a type of steroid, which is used in a range of conditions typically to reduce inflammation).
    *Hydroxychloroquine (related to an anti-malarial drug)
    *Azithromycin (a commonly used antibiotic)
    * lopinavir-ritonavir (anti-hiv drug)
    * dexamet

    • Do they have a fucking control group? If not, all of the studies are shit.

      • I assume they do since they are medical professionals. Could you please look at the website to double check?

      • A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. No they're not shit. They can be one another's control groups, to some extent. You can use multiple groups to assert treatment A is better than Treatment B.

        I barely scratched the surface of the topic in the Statistics courses I took, but the ignorance displayed here is appalling.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        To look at what each medication results in vs no medication?

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 17, 2020 @04:47PM (#59959924)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • That's why I don't condemn trials of just about anything. Even prayer. I maintain that eventually we will be able to find individual attributes that correlate with effective drug treatments. But right now we haven't identified the relevant genetic and metabolic factors, so we're all groping through our superstitions..

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