Hydroxychloroquine trial

[Tessa K]

I know we've touched on this in other threads relating to Trump's promotion of it but now we're testing it here.

Chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine or a placebo will be given to more than 40,000 healthcare workers from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. All the participants are staff who are in contact with Covid-19 patients [...] It will test whether the drugs can prevent healthcare workers exposed to the virus from contracting it [...] Hydroxychloroquine regulates the body's immune response and is also used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and Lupus [...]

It has not yet been shown to be safe and effective in the prevention or treatment of coronavirus and can cause dangerous heart arrhythmias.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52737169

Could someone who understands this better than me please explain how you can prove a negative in this case? Take this and you won't get Covid. Even with a control group, aren't there many other factors that could skew the results?

[Little waster]

I know we've touched on this in other threads relating to Trump's promotion of it but now we're testing it here.

Chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine or a placebo will be given to more than 40,000 healthcare workers from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. All the participants are staff who are in contact with Covid-19 patients [...] It will test whether the drugs can prevent healthcare workers exposed to the virus from contracting it [...] Hydroxychloroquine regulates the body's immune response and is also used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and Lupus [...]

It has not yet been shown to be safe and effective in the prevention or treatment of coronavirus and can cause dangerous heart arrhythmias.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52737169

Could someone who understands this better than me please explain how you can prove a negative in this case? Take this and you won't get Covid. Even with a control group, aren't there many other factors that could skew the results?

I suppose as long as the three arms of the study are comparable in their make-up of the participants in terms of age, sex, ethnicity, role, country etc. then the confounding factors are controlled for so any statistically significant additional benefit/cost to the members of one of the arms will show up compared to the others.

[tom p]

I know we've touched on this in other threads relating to Trump's promotion of it but now we're testing it here.

Chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine or a placebo will be given to more than 40,000 healthcare workers from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. All the participants are staff who are in contact with Covid-19 patients [...] It will test whether the drugs can prevent healthcare workers exposed to the virus from contracting it [...] Hydroxychloroquine regulates the body's immune response and is also used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and Lupus [...]

It has not yet been shown to be safe and effective in the prevention or treatment of coronavirus and can cause dangerous heart arrhythmias.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52737169

Could someone who understands this better than me please explain how you can prove a negative in this case? Take this and you won't get Covid. Even with a control group, aren't there many other factors that could skew the results?

I suppose as long as the three arms of the study are comparable in their make-up of the participants in terms of age, sex, ethnicity, role, country etc. then the confounding factors are controlled for so any statistically significant additional benefit/cost to the members of one of the arms will show up compared to the others.

Exactly. It's no different to a vaccine trial, except this one won't work & it's only being done because a French quack conned a gobby racist with the biggest bully pulpit in the world.
I can't see how any ethics committee could, in good conscience, allow this trial to take place.

[Stranger Mouse]

It’s already clear that people who have been taking this. Rap for lupus are not protected from Covid so presumably all this is to keep on Trump’s good side

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04- ... ovid-.html

[Woodchopper]

Just published @TheLancet
The largest study of hydroxychloroquine shows a significant increase in death (~35%) and >2-fold increase of serious heart arrhythmias. ~96,000 patients, ~15,000 on HCQ or CQ from 671 hospitals, 6 continents.

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/12 ... 4287725574

[Stranger Mouse]

Just published @TheLancet
The largest study of hydroxychloroquine shows a significant increase in death (~35%) and >2-fold increase of serious heart arrhythmias. ~96,000 patients, ~15,000 on HCQ or CQ from 671 hospitals, 6 continents.

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/12 ... 4287725574

Dead cat distraction? https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... 242780002/

[Little waster]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... fety-fears

Well that was unexpected*.


*in the sense of completely expected.

[AMS]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... fety-fears

Well that was unexpected*.


*in the sense of completely expected.

From that article:

A controversial French doctor who has promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for coronavirus said on Monday he stood by his belief the drugs could help patients recover. He also rejected the Lancet study of the records of 96,000 patients across hundreds of hospitals.

“How can a messy study done with ‘big data’ change what we see?”, Prof Didier Raoult asked in a video posted on the website of his infectious diseases hospital in Marseille.

“Here we have had 4,000 people go through our hospital, you don’t think I’m going to change because there are people who do ‘big data’, which is a kind of completely delusional fantasy,” he said.

This is Wakefield-esque territory.

[Blackcountryboy]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... fety-fears

Well that was unexpected*.


*in the sense of completely expected.

WHO have said that just to annoy Trump.

[Pishwish]

US right wing twitter are delighted with this story (experts duped by anti-Trump data, that sort of thing). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... hloroquine

[basementer]

Via "In The Pipeline"
Surgisphere, the company behind the Lancet study, look implausible
http://freerangestats.info/blog/2020/05 ... -data-firm

[Little waster]

US right wing twitter are delighted with this story (experts duped by anti-Trump data, that sort of thing). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... hloroquine

OK the company looks suss, however ...

People are making a big deal that one of the employees is an "adult content model" with the unspoken suggestion that their scientists are nothing more than jism-soaked degenerates.

I'm uncomfortable with that. The reality is she is their Director of Sales with a background in marketing who on occasion has done some modelling. Her portfolio is "raunchy" (bikinis, dresses, dressing gowns etc.) rather than p.rnographic although I suppose there is a chance that if you dug deeper something more x-rated may be out there. Not that it should really matter as it has no bearing on her role, but even if she was one of their scientists she wouldn't have been the first to have funded their studies through unconventional means, it should not reflect on their quality of work.

The euphemistic "adult content model"is unhelpful and the whole thing smacks of sl.t-shaming, and this from the Guardian. As a society are we really still having a fit of the vapours because someone gets their kit off for money? All the while with a confessed sex offender, faintly smelling of urine, sat on the White House throne.

Saying that though, yeah Surgisphere looks like they are bull-sh.tting.

[tom p]

US right wing twitter are delighted with this story (experts duped by anti-Trump data, that sort of thing). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... hloroquine

OK the company looks suss, however ...

People are making a big deal that one of the employees is an "adult content model" with the unspoken suggestion that their scientists are nothing more than jism-soaked degenerates.

I'm uncomfortable with that. The reality is she is their Director of Sales with a background in marketing who on occasion has done some modelling. Her portfolio is "raunchy" (bikinis, dresses, dressing gowns etc.) rather than p.rnographic although I suppose there is a chance that if you dug deeper something more x-rated may be out there. Not that it should really matter as it has no bearing on her role, but even if she was one of their scientists she wouldn't have been the first to have funded their studies through unconventional means, it should not reflect on their quality of work.

The euphemistic "adult content model"is unhelpful and the whole thing smacks of sl.t-shaming, and this from the Guardian. As a society are we really still having a fit of the vapours because someone gets their kit off for money? All the while with a confessed sex offender, faintly smelling of urine, sat on the White House throne.

Saying that though, yeah Surgisphere looks like they are bull-sh.tting.

I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above

[Pishwish]

Lancet paper retracted.

[EACLucifer]

US right wing twitter are delighted with this story (experts duped by anti-Trump data, that sort of thing). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... hloroquine

OK the company looks suss, however ...

People are making a big deal that one of the employees is an "adult content model" with the unspoken suggestion that their scientists are nothing more than jism-soaked degenerates.

I'm uncomfortable with that. The reality is she is their Director of Sales with a background in marketing who on occasion has done some modelling. Her portfolio is "raunchy" (bikinis, dresses, dressing gowns etc.) rather than p.rnographic although I suppose there is a chance that if you dug deeper something more x-rated may be out there. Not that it should really matter as it has no bearing on her role, but even if she was one of their scientists she wouldn't have been the first to have funded their studies through unconventional means, it should not reflect on their quality of work.

The euphemistic "adult content model"is unhelpful and the whole thing smacks of sl.t-shaming, and this from the Guardian. As a society are we really still having a fit of the vapours because someone gets their kit off for money? All the while with a confessed sex offender, faintly smelling of urine, sat on the White House throne.

Saying that though, yeah Surgisphere looks like they are bull-sh.tting.

This. It's amazing how many people seem to maintain a Victorian idea of what women are allowed to get up to without being forever tainted.

[Herainestold]

TCM therapies are looking better than hydroxychloroquine at this point.

[Squeak]

TCM therapies are looking better than hydroxychloroquine at this point.

Well, they do if you take studies out of China at face value...

Nearly 100% of studies finding that TCM is effective sure looks like the hallmark of reliable science to me.

[Tessa K]

Right, so five minutes of Google found this (my bold). So yes, TCM has been used for thousands of years but that proves nothing. Trepanning was really popular from 7000+ years ago until comparatively recently to let the evil out.

There is always a chance that herbal medicine will come up with a treatment as it has done many times before but only with proper testing and manufacture. As Ben Goldacre says - what do we call alternative medicine that works? Medicine.

Traditional Chinese herbal medicine for treating novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pneumonia: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Discussion: A review of 90 studies of traditional Chinese herbal medicine for SARS revealed positive but inconclusive results about the efficacy of combined treatment, using traditional Chinese herbal medicine as an adjuvant. Based on previous experience of treating SARS with traditional Chinese herbal medicine, the General Office of the National Health and Health Commission of China and the Office of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine encouraged the integration of traditional Chinese herbal medicine and western medicine.

https://systematicreviewsjournal.biomed ... 20-01343-4

and this study finds

The safety of TCM in the treatment of emerging coronavirus diseases was not included in the observation on SARS patients. It was reported that some herbs used in TCM contain nephrotoxins and mutagens, while the toxicological features of the most of Chinese herbal medicines remain to be fully understood. Furthermore, herbs used in TCM can mimic, or magnify, or oppose the effect of conventional medicines. Thus, the safety of TCM used in treatment of emerging coronavirus infections should be carefully evaluated. It is particularly important to avoid toxicity or interfere with the efficacy of conventional treatment caused by herb-drug interaction.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7098036/

and this

Another cause for concern is the lack of clarity on what exactly this herbal Covid-19 ‘cure’ contains. Chinese officials so far have been rather vague when it comes to what is in the medicine, and what effect each ingredient is meant to have

https://www.soas.ac.uk/blogs/study/soas ... bat-covid/

and this

Other scientists say there is no convincing evidence that these remedies are effective against COVID-19. Although the trials had control groups, practitioners and patients don't seem to have been blinded to who was receiving the experimental treatment. Double-blind trials are the gold standard for assessing a treatment’s efficacy... Several of the ‘decoctions’ promoted by the health ministry’s official COVID-19 treatment guidelines include a herb called ephedra, which contains the stimulant pseudoephedrine. Extracts of the herb containing this substance have been banned in the United States and several European countries after a string of deaths in the 1990s and 2000s among those who used it for dieting or energy enhancement.... In late April, a doctor at a hospital in Hubei province was censured and demoted from his administrative positions after posting online that China’s recommendations on COVID-19 treatments, particularly TCM remedies, were not science-based.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01284-x

[Opti]

Now this.

[Tessa K]

Now this.

They really should try fake tan next. Trump uses loads of that and he hasn't got infected.

[Herainestold]

Now this.

They really should try fake tan next. Trump uses loads of that and he hasn't got infected.

lol: Good point

[Gfamily]

Now this.

They really should try fake tan next. Trump uses loads of that and he hasn't got infected.

When I was on Mepacrine* for a time for discoidal Lupus, I was warned that it would give me a 'yellow tinge'.

* A variant of chloroquine.

[jimbob]

Meanwhile, some more robust data on Hydroxychloroquine

Derek Lowe's take on it

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/a ... hloroquine

[Lew Dolby]

Looks like Didier Raoult, the french medic who pushed hydroxychloroquine as a cure for CoViD, is about to be struck off (at last).

[French TV; can't find an eng-lang link yet]

[KAJ]

Looks like Didier Raoult, the french medic who pushed hydroxychloroquine as a cure for CoViD, is about to be struck off (at last).

[French TV; can't find an eng-lang link yet]

Controversial French doctor Raoult in disciplinary hearing over notorious Covid-19 tips