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Medicine United States

Researchers Cut Chloroquine Study Short Over Safety Concerns, Citing a 'Primary Outcome' of Death (cnbc.com) 213

Citing a "primary outcome" of death, researchers cut short a study testing anti-malaria drug chloroquine as a potential treatment for Covid-19 after some patients developed irregular heart rates and nearly two dozen of them died after taking doses of the drug daily. From a report: Scientists say the findings, published Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association, should prompt some degree of skepticism from the public toward enthusiastic claims about and perhaps "serve to curb the exuberant use" of the drug, which has been touted by President Donald Trump as a potential "game-changer" in the fight against the coronavirus. Chloroquine gained widespread international attention following two small studies, including one with 36 Covid-19 patients published March 17 in France, found that most patients taking the drug cleared the coronavirus from their system a lot faster than the control group. The JAMA report said those trials didn't meet the publishing society's standards.
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Researchers Cut Chloroquine Study Short Over Safety Concerns, Citing a 'Primary Outcome' of Death

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  • Old news (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24, 2020 @10:38AM (#59984322)

    It's roundly established that this drug combination is NOT EFFECTIVE when the disease is already in a severe state. All the positive results have come from using the combo much earlier. This is also true of antivirals like tamiflu. Sadly this whole thing has become so politicized that people cheer on bad results and deliberately extrapolate them to imply the drug is worse than useless.

    • I dont' think anyone is cheering bad results. What they're doing is pointing out how the "let's have some trials first" was the more correct approach rather than the "they're going to die anyway, so you should let them have the drug!" claims that were made many times in slashdot. The claims that it might not be safe were roundly mocked here and other places, along with calls for the FDA to stop getting in the way.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Who is cheering on bad results? Who is "deliberately extrapolating"? I'm sure there are fine people on both sides! ')

  • That is what I read, here: https://abc7.com/health/doctor... [abc7.com]
  • Is this poor outcome similar to being floxed [google.com]?
  • My wife takes medication where the effects may also be a rash, sudden death, ...

  • by cirby ( 2599 ) on Friday April 24, 2020 @12:57PM (#59985364)

    They're related, but not the same.

    Chloroquine diphosphate has more side effects, and the dose given in that study was far too high. 600 milligrams twice a day is a toxic dose. The reference dose (450 mg twice on the first day, and once daily after that) is a borderline dose already. As a reference, the dose for HCQ starts with 800 mg, followed by smaller doses.

    The toxic dose for HCQ is about twice that of the diphosphate, so they gave those patients more than the equivalent of a triple dose of HCQ.

    They also left out the zinc supplements, which the successful HCQ trials have shown to be very important.

  • That stuff all people actually read past the length of a twitter, and going to the source be damned.

    Itâ(TM)s all outrage all the time.

    If thatâ(TM)s all you have, go punch someone irl. That will probably a) cure Covid if you have it, in the sense that whoever you punched will likely kill you, and b) make you feel even more unthinkingly self-righteous and do you will repeat (a) until your Covid problems have been cured.

  • by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Friday April 24, 2020 @01:18PM (#59985480)

    This study was to actually determine the safety of high dosage cloroquine vs low dosages of cloroquine, not whether it's effective at treating SARS-CoV-2.

    The high dosage group receives 600mg CQ twice daily (1200mg), vs the low dosage group which received 450mg twice daily (900mg).

    Both are higher dosages, and a higher risk drug, than the two studies out of France which showed that hydroxycloroquine with azithromycin showed promise. The French studies administered HCQ 200mg three tiimes daily (600mg), plus 500mg AZ on day one then 200mg each day after.

  • So it seems it is highly effective at preventing death from COVID-19. However, I suspect that shooting an infected person in the head would be more curative of COVID-19 and absolutely and certainly 100% effective at preventing death due to COVID-19.

  • They haven't stopped using ventilators, even though they have basically the same outcome as Chloroquine.

    https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]

  • Hoax! Fake news! JAMA is a pawn of China just like the WHO! It's totally safe!

    The mayor of Las Vegas is going to sign up the entire city for a future double-blind study.

    What could possibly be more important than living? /s

  • Gin and tonic works great as a treatment since traditionally tonic water is flavored with quinine.

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