Low-dose Hydroxychloroquine Therapy and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: A Nationwi

[PeteS in CA]

Low-dose Hydroxychloroquine Therapy and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: A Nationwide Observational Study of 8075 Participants

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920303423?via%3Dihub

Methods
We conducted a retrospective analysis of in-hospital mortality in the Belgian national COVID-19 hospital surveillance data. Patients treated either with HCQ alone and supportive care (HCQ group) were compared to patients treated with supportive care only (no-HCQ group) ...

Results
Of 8075 patients with complete discharge data on 24th of May and diagnosed before the 1st of May, 4542 received HCQ in monotherapy and 3533 were in the no-HCQ group. Death was reported in 804/4542 (17.7%) and 957/3533 (27.1%), respectively. ...

Conclusions
Compared to supportive care only, low-dose HCQ monotherapy was independently associated with lower mortality in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 diagnosed and treated early or later after symptom onset.

[jmyrlefuller]

In essence, it improves odds of survival, but it's not even close to a 100% cure—a reasonable conclusion.

[Smokin Joe]

In essence, it improves odds of survival, but it's not even close to a 100% cure—a reasonable conclusion.

Meh. No zinc in the study. Again. It's a tricycle missing  at east one wheel, and it still goes.

Note,

On a side note, mortality in the 761 participants who received HCQ and AZM was 18.9%.

A Considerably higher rate of survival than for HCQ alone.

But in France: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302817?via%3Dihub

Although this is a retrospective analysis, results suggest that early diagnosis, early isolation and early treatment of COVID-19 patients, with at least 3 days of HCQ-AZ lead to a significantly better clinical outcome and a faster viral load reduction than other treatments.

[PeteS in CA]

Meh. No zinc in the study. Again. It's a tricycle missing  at east one wheel, and it still goes.
...

The two groups either received HCQ plus ordinary supportive care or just ordinary supportive care. IOW, no azithromycin or anything to counteract/prevent cytokine storm. While HCQ is better understood - treatment should be begun early and with azithromycin and, e.g., zinc - the patients in Belgium were being treated according to guidance given in mid March. IOW, while we know now that guidance is incomplete and imprecise, the guidance conformed to what was known at the time.

So, yeah. Despite HCQ not being used as properly as we now know it should, it still resulted in significant improvement in patient outcome. The other point of significance is the scale of the study, thousands of patients received HCQ and thousands did not.