New York: Hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug which US President Donald Trump called a “game changer” against COVID-19, is not effective against the disease, according to a study which raises concerns about the drug’s widespread usage by many governments across the world in fighting the pandemic.
The yet to be peer-reviewed study, published in the preprint server medRxiv, made a retrospective analysis of patients hospitalised with COVID-19 in all the Veterans Health Administration medical centers across the US. The scientists, including those from the University of South Carolina in the US, analysed the associations between the use of drugs hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and corresponding clinical outcomes.
After conducting a research, the scientists said there is no evidence that use of hydroxychloroquine reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in patients. The scientists said they took into account the variation in the baseline characteristics of the patients across the three groups.
“Hydroxychloroquine use with or without co-administration of azithromycin did not improve mortality or reduce the need for mechanical ventilation in hospitalized patients,” the scientists wrote in the study. On the contrary, they said, hydroxychloroquine use alone was associated with an increased risk of death compared to standard care alone.
“Although ongoing randomized, controlled studies are expected to provide more informative evidence about hydroxychloroquine in the coming months, the outcomes observed in our study represent the best available data,” the researchers wrote in the study.
“The findings from this study suggest caution in using hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized Covid-19 patients, particularly when not combined with azithromycin,” the researchers concluded. (PTI)
