Hydroxychloroquinine updates (and other potential treatments)

[tower912]

Hydroxy used in conjunction with a particular steroid will not increase your risk of dying.   But even the best reading of this study does not in any way make it a game changer.

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

Actually......

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1280328830218051584?s=21

Oh brother....

[pbiflyer]

What have you got to lose?

A high-risk Florida teen who died from covid-19 attended a huge church party, then was given hydroxychloroquine by her parents, report says

“A medical examiner’s report recently made public, however, has raised questions about Carsyn’s case. The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner found that the immunocompromised teen went to a large church party with roughly 100 other children where she did not wear a mask and social distancing was not enforced. Then, after getting sick, nearly a week passed before she was taken to the hospital, and during that time her parents gave her hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug touted by President Trump that the Food and Drug Administration has issued warnings about, saying usage could cause potentially deadly heart rhythm problems.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/07/florida-carsyn-davis-coronavirus/


The mother was also posting links on Facebook to dontmaskourkids.com while her daughter was intubated the day before she died.

[Jockey]

Can she be charged with 3rd degree murder? Her actions killed her daughter.

And we know where she got her ideas.

[pbiflyer]

Can she be charged with 3rd degree murder? Her actions killed her daughter.

And we know where she got her ideas.

Worst thing is she is a nurse and her husband is a PA. Covidiots. 

[GooooMarquette]

Worst thing is she is a nurse and her husband is a PA. Covidiots.

I have a feeling the Risk Management, Legal, HR and Public Relations departments where they work are trying to figure out how best to get them out. If they treat their own daughter that way, I can't imagine they're doing their patients much good.

[Uncle Rico]

Terrible story about vets and hydroxy



https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/07/covid-cocktail-inside-pa-nursing-home-that-gave-some-veterans-hydroxychloroquine-even-without-covid-19-testing/?outputType=amp#click=https://t.co/dzFHNa9KK6Pp

[Jockey]

Terrible story about vets and hydroxy



https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/07/covid-cocktail-inside-pa-nursing-home-that-gave-some-veterans-hydroxychloroquine-even-without-covid-19-testing/?outputType=amp#click=https://t.co/dzFHNa9KK6Pp

Behind a paywall. I assume Vets died from getting hydroxy?

[Uncle Rico]

Behind a paywall. I assume Vets died from getting hydroxy?

Yes.  Often kept from families knowledge.  Used on vets without symptoms.  Used despite knowing side effects they may cost high risk patients. 

[Jockey]

Yes.  Often kept from families knowledge.  Used on vets without symptoms.  Used despite knowing side effects they may cost high risk patients.

So, basically, they were murdered?

Seems like a not so nice way to treat our vets.

[Frenns Liquor Depot]

Nothing new here but a good summary of the evolution of treatment

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/8/21317128/improved-covid-treatment-hospitals-remdesivir-dexamethasone

[Frenns Liquor Depot]

Of 491 patients randomly assigned to a group, 423 contributed primary end point data. Of these, 341 (81%) had laboratory-confirmed infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or epidemiologically linked exposure to a person with laboratory-confirmed infection; 56% (236 of 423) were enrolled within 1 day of symptoms starting. Change in symptom severity over 14 days did not differ between the hydroxychloroquine and placebo groups

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-4207

[TSmith34, Inc.]

Of 491 patients randomly assigned to a group, 423 contributed primary end point data. Of these, 341 (81%) had laboratory-confirmed infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or epidemiologically linked exposure to a person with laboratory-confirmed infection; 56% (236 of 423) were enrolled within 1 day of symptoms starting. Change in symptom severity over 14 days did not differ between the hydroxychloroquine and placebo groups

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-4207

To quote Kayleigh MAGAninny, "Science shouldn't stand in the way" of rocket and pace chugging all the HCQ they want.

[MU82]

Another article, this from The Associated Press, updating what scientists have come to know about several potential COVID-19 drugs that have been studied and tested.

+++

Fresh studies give more information about what treatments do or don’t work for COVID-19, with high-quality methods that give reliable results.

British researchers on Friday published their research on the only drug shown to improve survival – a cheap steroid called dexamethasone. Two other studies found that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine does not help people with only mild symptoms.

For months before studies like these, learning what helps or harms has been undermined by “desperation science” as doctors and patients tried therapies on their own or through a host of studies not strong enough to give clear answers.

“For the field to move forward and for patients’ outcomes to improve, there will need to be fewer small or inconclusive studies” and more like the British one, Drs. Anthony Fauci and H. Clifford Lane of the National Institutes of Health wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

It’s now time to do more studies comparing treatments and testing combinations, said Dr. Peter Bach, a health policy expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Here are highlights of recent treatment developments:

DEXAMETHASONE

The British study, led by the University of Oxford, tested a type of steroid widely used to tamp down inflammation, which can become severe and prove fatal in later stages of COVID-19.

About 2,104 patients given the drug were compared to 4,321 patients getting usual care.

It reduced deaths by 36% for patients sick enough to need breathing machines: 29% on the drug died versus 41% given usual care. It curbed the risk of death by 18% for patients needing just supplemental oxygen: 23% on the drug died versus 26% of the others.

However, it seemed harmful at earlier stages or milder cases of illness: 18% of those on the drug died versus 14% of those given usual care.

The clarity of who does and does not benefit “probably will result in many lives saved,” Fauci and Lane wrote.

HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE

The same Oxford study also tested hydroxychloroquine in a rigorous manner and researchers previously said it did not help hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

After 28 days, about 25.7% on hydroxychloroquine had died versus 23.5% given usual care – a difference so small it could have occurred by chance

Now, details published on a research site for scientists show that the drug may have done harm. Patients given hydroxychloroquine were less likely to leave the hospital alive within 28 days – 60% on the drug versus 63% given usual care. Those not needing breathing machines when they started treatment also were more likely to end up on one or to die.

Two other experiments found that early treatment with the drug did not help outpatients with mild COVID-19.

A study of 293 people from Spain published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found no significant differences in reducing the amount of virus patients had, the risk of worsening and needing hospitalization, or the time until recovery.

A similar study by University of Minnesota doctors in Annals of Internal Medicine of 423 mildly ill COVID-19 patients found that hydroxychloroquine did not substantially reduce symptom severity and brought more side effects.

“It is time to move on” from treating patients with this drug, Dr. Neil Schluger from New York Medical College wrote in a commentary in the journal.

REMDESIVIR

The only other therapy that’s been shown to help COVID-19 patients is remdesivir, an antiviral that shortens hospitalization by about four days on average.

“The role of remdesivir in severe COVID is now what we need to figure out,” Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Bach wrote in an email, saying the drug needs to be tested in combination with dexamethasone now.

Details of the government-led remdesivir study have not yet been published, but researchers are eager to see how many patients received other drugs such as steroids and hydroxychloroquine.

Meanwhile, Gilead Sciences, the company that makes remdesivir, which is given as an IV now, has started testing an inhaled version that would allow it to be tried in less ill COVID-19 patients to try to keep them from getting sick enough to need hospitalization. Gilead also has started testing remdesivir in a small group of children.

Supplies are very limited, and the U.S. government is allocating doses to hospitals through September.

[tower912]

Heparin.

[pacearrow02]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.jsonline.com/amp/5444654002

We’re starting to get this thing dialed in.  Amazing results coming from our “friends” to the west.

[Frenns Liquor Depot]

Could be another avenue.  However as the article says.  No data presented and needs review

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53467022

[Big Papi]

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/synairgen-shares-soar-300-covid-treatment-but-caveats-abound

[pacearrow02]

https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exists-we-need-start-using-it-opinion-1519535?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true

Interesting read.  This particular epidemiologist is still fighting for hydroxy and offers a compelling argument for the early continued use of it.

[forgetful]

https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exists-we-need-start-using-it-opinion-1519535?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true

Interesting read.  This particular epidemiologist is still fighting for hydroxy and offers a compelling argument for the early continued use of it.

The man who wrote this continually disregards, large peer-reviewed double blind control studies that contradict his opinion, instead favoring studies by random doctors, who don't even test their patients for COVID before treatment, and who offer no controls or concrete evidence of their results.

The man is bizarre, and clearly not a scientist.

[tower912]

Some people say....

[GB Warrior]

Things going well in Brazil.

https://twitter.com/gersonjr/status/1286451690892341252

[muguru]

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/yale-epidemiologist-says-hydroxychloroquine-key-defeating-covid-19



An Ivy League epidemiology professor is claiming that hydroxychloroquine — the drug that has been at the center of a politicized medical debate for the last several months — is "the key to defeating COVID-19," and that medical officials should be widely prescribing it to save the lives of thousands of coronavirus patients.

Harvey Risch, a professor of epidemiology at Yale as well as the director of that school's Molecular Cancer Epidemiology Laboratory, argues in a Newsweek op-ed this week that "the data fully support" the wide use of hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment of COVID-19.

"When this inexpensive oral medication is given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control, it has shown to be highly effective," Risch argues in the column.

Hydroxychloroquine has been the subject of a bitter and protracted political argument for the past several months, after President Trump in mid-March said the drug was showing promising effects in treating COVID-19. Media outlets and commentators shortly thereafter began touting numerous stories of the drug's alleged fatal dangers as well as its reported ineffectiveness in treating the disease.

Risch, at Newsweek, argues that multiple studies over the past several months have demonstrated that the drug is a safe and efficacious treatment method for COVID-19.

Among the successful treatment experiments, he writes, are "an additional 400 high-risk patients treated by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, with zero deaths; four studies totaling almost 500 high-risk patients treated in nursing homes and clinics across the U.S., with no deaths; a controlled trial of more than 700 high-risk patients in Brazil, with significantly reduced risk of hospitalization and two deaths among 334 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine; and another study of 398 matched patients in France, also with significantly reduced hospitalization risk."

Risch says the drug is most effective "when given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control."

Though according to Risch the benefits of the drug are clear, he nevertheless concedes that the subject "has become highly politicized."

"For many, it is viewed as a marker of political identity, on both sides of the political spectrum," he said. "Nobody needs me to remind them that this is not how medicine should proceed."

He also argues that "the drug has not been used properly in many studies," and that delays in administering the drug have reduced its effectiveness.

"In the future," Risch says in the column, "I believe this misbegotten episode regarding hydroxychloroquine will be studied by sociologists of medicine as a classic example of how extra-scientific factors overrode clear-cut medical evidence."

"But for now," he adds, "reality demands a clear, scientific eye on the evidence and where it points."

[Plaque Lives Matter!]

Things going well in Brazil.

https://twitter.com/gersonjr/status/1286451690892341252

I like how he was bitten not once, but twice by an emu. That's just impressive.

[GB Warrior]

I like how he was bitten not once, but twice by an emu. That's just impressive.

Sensing a trend