DECRYPTION – The presumed protective effect of the anti-malarial does not seem strong enough to prevent the onset of the disease in populations suffering from autoimmune diseases who take it every day.
The promises of hydroxychloroquine, whose antiviral effect in vitro against Sars-CoV-2 had raised many hopes, are far from being fulfilled. So far, no study has really succeeded in convincing the scientific community: at an early or advanced stage of the disease, alone or combined with an antibiotic, the curative effect of the molecule is, in the best of cases, too weak to be really significant in the clinical data collected.
A new study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine has just seen it again. Of nearly 1,400 infected people who came to the emergency room of a New York hospital, 811 received treatment with hydroxychloroquine for ten days. The remaining 565 served as a control group. The treatment had no significant effect on the rate of intubation or death. The researchers conclude that the molecule should not be given outside of randomized trials seeking to prove its efficacy more precisely
