Tag: hydroxychloroquine

Trump Resumes Promotion Of Debunked ‘Miracle’ Drug For Covid-19

Donald Trump spent Monday on Twitter touting an outlier study published by the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan about an anti-malarial drug he has previously presented as a ‘miracle‘ cure for COVID-19.

“Treatment with hydroxychloroquine cut the death rate significantly in sick patients hospitalized with COVID-19 — and without heart-related side-effects, according to a new study published by Henry Ford Health System,” Trump tweeted. “In a large-scale retrospective analysis, of 2,541 patients hospitalized between March 10 and May 2, 2020 across the system’s six hospitals, the study found 13 percent of those treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died compared to 26.4 percent not treated with hydroxychloroquine.”

The findings of the study have been disputed by other researchers. Continue reading.

The ‘Covid Cocktail’: Inside a Pa. nursing home that gave some veterans hydroxychloroquine even without covid-19 testing

Washington Post logoSPRING CITY, Pa. — They wrapped the dead in body bags and raced back to treat the living, crammed into a nursing home that, day after day, played the somber sound of taps over the speaker system so the veterans who lived there had the chance to say goodbye.

The nurses and aides at the Southeastern Veterans’ Center in the suburbs of Philadelphia had watched so much go wrong since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The communal dining that lasted into April, the nights that feverish patients were left to sleep beside roommates who weren’t sick yet. “Merry Christmas,” one nurse told another when they finally got N95 masks, weeks into the crisis and just before administrators stopped staffing the isolation rooms because too many people were feared infected.

But what worried some nurses most was what they called the “covid cocktail,” the widespread, off-label use of one of the antimalarial drugs touted by President Trump in March as a potentially game-changing treatment for covid-19. Continue reading.

We need to know what Trump and Giuliani got out of boosting hydroxychloroquine

AlterNet logoI’m going to paint you two scenarios. In Scenario One, the president of the United States is an incurious and poorly informed person who holds many delusional opinions and is widely described by the people who work with him as an idiot, dope, or moron. He doesn’t have the interest or stamina to read a two-page report, and intelligence briefers have to come up with innovative visual aids in a desperate attempt to get him to absorb vital information. While he has no clue what is going on half the time, he’s always looking for an angle to make a buck, and he’s proven quite adept at duping the public out of their money.

In Scenario Two, none of the above is true and Donald Trump actually is a voracious reader who likes to keep up on the latest in epidemiology by perusing European medical journals, including the one published by the French International Study of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. It is there that Trump learns of a (horribly bad) study based on only 20 patients claiming that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin could be taken in combination to reduce the amount of COVID-19 virus in the nose and throat. Armed with this knowledge, he immediately comes to the independent conclusion that this treatment regimen has “a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” He then says he is taking hydroxychloroquine himself and begins promoting it to anyone who will listen, not for any hidden financial benefit but strictly as an altruistic way to improve public health and save lives.

Which of these two scenarios seems more likely to be true? Continue reading.

FDA ends emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine

Axios logoThe FDA ended Monday its emergency use authorizations for two controversial drugs, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, as a potential coronavirus treatment.

Why it matters: Despite gaining President Trump’s adamant support and use, the drugs have failed in several clinical trials and have been found to possibly cause serious heart problems.

What they’re saying: The FDA said it believes the drugs “are unlikely to be effective in treating COVID-19” under the emergency use authorization. Continue reading.

Hydroxychloroquine, a drug promoted by Trump, failed to prevent healthy people from getting covid-19 in trial

NOTE:  This is an article provided free of charge by The Washington Post.

Washington Post logoThe University of Minnesota enrolled health-care workers and others exposed to the disease in the first randomized prevention study of the drug

Hydroxychloroquine did not prevent healthy people exposed to someone with covid-19 from getting the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to a study being published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study is the first randomized clinical trial that tested the antimalarial drug as a preventive measure, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School who conducted the trial. It showed that hydroxychloroquine, which has been touted by President Trump, was no more effective than a placebo — in this case, a vitamin — in protecting people exposed to covid-19.

“As we say in Tennessee, ‘that dog won’t hunt’ — it didn’t work,” said William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Schaffner, who was not involved in the trial, praised it as “rigorously done.” Continue reading.

A former White House adviser raises disturbing questions about Trump’s hydroxychloroquine use

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump, for over a month, has been pushing hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for COVID-19, but not until Monday did he claim to be taking the drug himself. The president told reporters he has been taking daily doses of hydroxychloroquine for “about a week and a half now” to prevent the disease, though it hasn’t been proven to do so and poses serious risks. Dr. Sean P. Conley, White House physician, expressed his approval.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, examines Conley’s approval in an article for Just Security and poses a series of questions for the White House doctor.

Following Trump’s hydroxychloroquine announcement, Conley said that he had discussed the matter with the president. Conley said in a press release: “After numerous discussions he and I had regarding the evidence for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine, we concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks.” Continue reading.

‘Crazy thing to do’: Health experts alarmed by Trump’s use of unproven drug

The treatment has no proven benefits for the coronavirus patients and can cause heart problems.

President Donald Trump’s startling admission Monday that he is taking hydroxychloroquine despite testing negative for the coronavirus alarmed health experts, who cautioned that people who follow his lead risk serious heart problems and other complications from the decades-old drug.

The treatment has been shown in observational studies to have limited or no proven benefits for coronavirus patients, and could even be harmful when used in certain combinations. But data from more extensive studies are still forthcoming. Public health experts expressed concern that Trump’s continued advocacy of the drug could cause another run on supplies, with serious consequences for patients with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases for which it is an approved treatment.

Despite testing negative, Trump told reporters he has been taking the drug in combination with other medicines for a “couple of weeks.” That is around the same time the first two cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the White House. Continue reading.

‘It’s very sad’: Nancy Pelosi blasts Trump’s mix of arrogance and scientific ignorance

AlterNet logoSpeaking on MSNBC this morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed President Trump’s advocacy for unproven coronavirus treatments, specifically drugs like Hydroxychloroquine, adding that not only is Trump pushing for these drugs, he’s also pushing for the agencies in charge of approving medical treatments to approve “what the administration wants rather than what science demands.”

“But nonetheless … let’s just go forward,” Pelosi said. “Let’s say that what we’re doing legislatively that we will provide the resources for our health services and the rest to meet the needs of the American people, for our scientists to quickly, as soon as possible, find a vaccine, hopefully a cure even sooner than that, and that we will make sure there is integrity in how it is developed and integrity in how it’s distributed. That doesn’t exist right now according to what we’re seeing from the White House.”

Host Andrea Mitchell then mentioned how a high profile vaccine researcher was allegedly removed from his government post for questioning the wisdom of Trump’s push for unproven treatments. Continue reading.

A small trial finds that hydroxychloroquine is not effective for treating coronavirus

On Saturday the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of two antimalarial drugs, hydroxychloroquine and a related medication, chloroquine, for emergency use to treat COVID-19. The drugs were touted by President Trump as a “game changer”for COVID-19.

However, a study just published in a French medical journal provides new evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not appear to help the immune system clear the coronavirus from the body. The study comes on the heels of two others – one in France and one in China – that reported some benefits in the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for COVID-19 patients who didn’t have severe symptoms of the virus.

I am a medicinal chemist who has specialized in discovery and development of antiviral drugs for the past 30 years, and I have been actively working on coronaviruses for the past seven. I am among a number of researchers who are concerned that this drug has been given too much of a high priority before there is enough evidence to show it is indeed effective. Continue reading.

Why does Trump call an 86-year-old unproven drug a game-changer against coronavirus?

Washington Post logoMedical experts say there is not enough evidence that anti-malarials chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine benefit patients with covid-19

The lack of vaccines and treatment for the novel coronavirus has allowed it to sweep the planet virtually unchecked. With a regimen of hunkering down and hand-washing the only effective way to slow its path, national leaders are desperate to find a medicine that could have an effect. But President Trump’s cheerleading for anti-malarial drugs has raised hopes beyond what is supported by the scientific facts.

>Bayer invented the medicine chloroquine in 1934, and it has been used for decades to treat malaria throughout the world. Hydroxychloroquine was invented during World War II to provide an alternative with fewer side effects.

Hydroxychloroquine, sold under the brand name Plaquenil, is also used by patients with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis to control inflammation. Both drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, are available as generics, but public and political interest has caused runs, hoarding and severe shortages in recent weeks. Continue reading.  Free article