Following the series on hydroxychloroquine, the treatment against the coronavirus defended in particular by Professor Didier Raoult, the director of the IHU Méditerranée Infection. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine casts doubt on the therapeutic benefits of this treatment.
Funded by the American Institutes of Health (NIH), this study was conducted on Covid-19 patients admitted to the emergency departments of New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
811 patients received two doses of 600 mg of hydroxychloroquine on the first day and then 400 mg daily for four days. And 565 patients did not receive the drug.
“The risk of intubation or death was not significantly greater or less among patients who received hydroxychloroquine than among those who received nothing,” said the study authors. And to conclude: “Our results do not support the use of hydroxychloroquine at the moment, apart from randomized clinical trials (distributing the patients by lot, Editor’s note) in order to demonstrate its effectiveness. “
Although Donald Trump has regularly advocated the use of hydroxychloroquine, which has been used for years to treat malaria and certain autoimmune diseases, as a treatment for coronavirus patients, Canadian and American health authorities warned in late April against using this medication outside of clinical trials.
