Hydroxychloroquine Doesn't Work

A RECOVERY study funded by the UK government had sought to randomly assign large numbers of Covid-19 patients to multiple potential treatments in the country’s National Health Service. The purpose was to rapidly get answers as to what worked and what didn’t. 

A total of 1,542 received hydroxychloroquine, and 3,132 received usual care. After 28 days of treatment, 25.7% of those on hydroxychloroquine and 23.5% of those received usual care had died, meaning those on hydroxychloroquine were 11% more likely to die. That difference, though, was not statistically significant. 

Therefore, hydroxychloroquine does not decrease the risk of death, averred University of Oxford epidemiologist Martin Landray (right), one of the study’s leaders. 

Meaning, the clinical trial had ruled out any benefit for patients hospitalized with coronavirus, likely closing the door to the use of the highly publicized medicine in the sickest patients – a use for which it is widely prescribed as the pandemic hit the US. 

[Note: The RECOVERY trial represented an early and large effort at such studies, testing not only hydroxychloroquine but also a pair of HIV drugs, lopinavir and ritonavir, and the steroid dexamethasone. The study was later expanded to also test using plasma from recovered patients to treat those who are still ill]. 

And so, I don’t understand why Malaysia is still depending on this drug. 

Unlike us in Malaysia, Singapore does not plan to use hydroxychloroquine to treat patients with Covid-19. I had stumbled upon this fact when I spied a June 06 article in Singapore’s Straits Times. 

And that’s the right thing to do because as Associate Professor David Lye (left), director of that country’s Infectious Disease Research and Training Office at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases said, "There is no proper study that shows hydroxychloroquine works". 

In fact, he maintained: "There is increasing evidence that anti-malarial drugs do not work". 

Not only that but that hydroxychloroquine produces side effects. He told of a small number of patients in Singapore who were given the drug and who had experienced gastrointestinal intolerance, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and discomfort in the upper abdomen below the ribs. 

BTW, the patients who were given the drug had milder forms of the Covid-19 infection. 

Still, Lye acknowledged that despite these reactions, the patients "still managed to complete the planned duration of treatment". He then stressed his point. "There is no evidence that the use of the drug worked". 

However, he did recognize remdesivir as being the only drug todate that has been proven to work in patients with Covid-19. The said drug was developed by Gilead Sciences to treat hepatitis C and even tested for treatment of Ebola and Marburg diseases – but it has proven to be ineffective. 

FYI, Remdesivir has been given emergency-use authorization for Covid-19 patients by the Food and Drug Administration in the US on May 01, 2020. 

Since last month, the NCID started trials of remdesivir, which was given intravenously to patients for five to 10 days. 

The drug works by blocking an enzyme that is necessary for the Covid-19-causing virus to multiply. 

I believe Malaysia uses a cocktail of drugs, which includes hydroxychloroquine. But one thing is clear. Hydroxychloroquine doesn't work!