Trump’s touted malaria drug for coronavirus fails another test

While the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine had certain limitations, doctors reported that the use of hydroxycholoquine did not decrease the need for patients requiring respiratory assistance or the risk of death.

“We have not seen any association between obtaining this drug and the possibility of dying or being intubated,” lead researcher Dr. Neil Schluger told Reuters in a telephone interview. “The patients who got the drug don’t seem to do any better.”

Of the patients who received hydroxychloroquine, 32.3% ended up needing a ventilator or died, compared to 14.9% of the patients who did not receive the drug.

But doctors were more likely to give hydroxychloroquine to sicker patients, so researchers at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center adjusted the rates to account for this. They concluded that the drug may not have hurt the patients, but it clearly did not help.

The old hydroxychloroquine, which has also been used for decades to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, has also shown no benefit when combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, the Schluger team reported. Azithromycin alone also showed no benefit.

Last month, doctors from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs reported that hydroxychloroquine did not help patients with COVID-19 and could be at higher risk of death.

This analysis of medical records showed a mortality rate of 28% when the drug was administered in addition to standard treatments, compared to 11% with standard care alone.

In the last study, 811 patients received hydroxychloroquine and 565 did not.

Because they were not randomly assigned to receive hydroxychloroquine or a placebo, “the study should not be seen as excluding the pros or cons” of the drug, the researchers said. Randomized trials, the gold standard for testing new therapies, should continue, they added.

But for now, “our hospital guidelines have changed, so we don’t recommend giving hydroxychloroquine to hospital patients,” said Dr. Schluger, head of the division of pulmonary medicine, allergies and intensive care in Irving.

Smaller studies, including one done in China, had suggested that hydroxychloroquine might be helpful, “but these were tiny studies and of poor quality. People seized them because the patients were dying, “he said.

There is currently no approved treatment for COVID-19, although the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir from Gilead Sciences Inc. last week received emergency use approval from US regulators.