NYT: "Malaria Drug Helps Virus Patients Improve, in Small Study"
From the New York Times:
The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helped to speed the recovery of a
small number of patients who were mildly ill from the coronavirus,
doctors in China reported this week.
Cough, fever and pneumonia went away faster, and the disease seemed
less likely to turn severe in people who received hydroxychloroquine
than in a comparison group not given the drug. The authors of the report
said that the medication was promising, but that more research was
needed to clarify how it might work in treating coronavirus disease and
to determine the best way to use it.
“It’s going to send a ripple of excitement out through the treating
community,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at
Vanderbilt University.
The study was small and limited to patients who were mildly or
moderately ill, not severe cases. Like many reports about the
coronavirus, it was posted at medRxiv, an online server for medical articles, before undergoing peer review by other researchers.
But the findings strongly support earlier studies suggesting a role for the drug, Dr. Schaffner said.
“I think it will reinforce the inclination of many people across the
country who are not in a position to enter their patients into clinical
trials but have already begun using hydroxychloroquine,” he said.
Previous reports from China and France that the drug seemed to help patients, along with enthusiastic comments from President Trump,
have created a buzz around hydroxychloroquine and the closely related
chloroquine, which are decades-old drugs used to treat malaria and
autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. A resulting
spike in demand has led to hoarding and shortages, and left patients who
rely on the drugs for chronic diseases wondering whether they will be
able to fill their prescriptions.
With no proven treatment for the coronavirus, many hospitals have
simply been giving hydroxychloroquine to patients, reasoning that it
might help and probably will not hurt, because it is relatively safe.
The earlier reports from France and China drew criticism because they
did not include control groups to compare treated versus untreated
patients. Researchers called the reports anecdotal, and said the lack of
controls made it impossible to determine whether the drugs worked....
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