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Covid-19: study alerts for the use of hydroxychloroquine 1:31
(CNN Spanish) - The name of hydroxychloroquine began to ring in the scientific community in China around February and March after researchers conducted a study on the use of the drug to treat the coronavirus.
However, several investigations, most recently published by the New England Medical Journal, have stated that hydroxychloroquine neither prevents the spread of the virus nor prevents a worsening of the disease.
You can listen to this episode on Spotify or your favorite podcast platform or read the transcript below.
Hello, I am Dr. Elmer Huerta and this is your daily dose of information about the new coronavirus, information that we hope will be useful to take care of your health and that of your family. Today we will see a study that shows that hydroxychloroquine does not prevent the contagion or the worsening of the disease.
With the outbreak of the covid-19 epidemic in China, they began looking for substances that could fight the virus.
During February and March, several groups of Chinese researchers published studies showing that hydroxychloroquine was able to decrease infection of isolated cells by the new coronavirus. That is what is called an in vitro study, that is, an isolated study, outside a living being.
Subsequently, the French doctor Didier Raoult, director of the Research Unit for Emerging Infectious and Tropical Diseases in Marseille, published last March 20, a study in 20 patients infected with the new coronavirus, who administered a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin antibiotic.
Their results showed that viral load, defined as the amount of viral particles in the patients' nasopharyngeal secretion, decreased after treatment.
Later, President Donald Trump mentioned that hydroxychloroquine had the potential to become the medicine that "forever changes" the treatment of the new coronavirus, statements that made the entire world pay attention to the medicine.
Immediately thereafter, the FDA or the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the use of hydroxychloroquine in combination with azithromycin as an emergency for use in hospitalized patients severely affected by the novel coronavirus. That made some countries, such as France and Peru among other countries, approved its use in hospitalized patients .
Unfortunately, many people mistook the message and started using the medicine on an outpatient basis , thinking it might prevent the spread or worsening of the infection.
Now, in a study published in the New England Medical Journal on June 3, the first carefully controlled trial is published in which hydroxychloroquine is pitted against a placebo to determine whether it can prevent infection or can prevent disease from progressing and it gets more serious.
The study invited 821 people ages 33-50 from the United States and Canada online, who were divided into two risk groups for exposure to the virus. The high risk was that of people who were less than 2 meters from a person infected by the coronavirus for more than ten minutes, without a mask or mask, and the moderate risk, in which the person wore a mask, but without mask.
88 percent of the participants had high-risk exposure, and 66% were health workers. Non-health workers were exposed at home to an infected spouse, partner or parent.
What is the risk of leaders taking hydroxychloroquine? 1:11Within four days of exposure, participants were randomly selected to receive hydroxychloroquine or a placebo, and then followed up to determine if they had laboratory-confirmed covid-19 for the next 14 days. Due to the paucity of evidence in the US, not all participants had molecular evidence.
The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the placebo group and those taking the medication. Among those who took hydroxychloroquine, 12 percent became ill. In the placebo group, 14.3 percent fell ill. Statistically analyzed, the difference between these rates was not significant.
Hydroxychloroquine also did not make the disease less severe.
The main side effect of hydroxychloroquine was nausea, with no problems with heart rhythm or other serious adverse effects.
Some limitations of the study included the lack of evidence to detect the virus in all participants, and that only 75 percent completed hydroxychloroquine treatment, mainly due to side effects.
WHO stops studies of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment against covid-19 0:31Also, waiting four days to just give hydroxychloroquine may have taken away your chance to function.
There are other studies in progress, but this one shows that hydroxychloroquine does not prevent contagion or worsening of the disease.
Send me your questions on Twitter, we will try to answer them in our next episodes. You can find me at @DrHuerta.
If you think this podcast is useful, please help others find it by rating and reviewing it in your favorite podcast app. We'll be back tomorrow so be sure to subscribe to get the latest episode on your account.
And for the most up-to-date information, you can always go to CNNEspanol.com. Thanks for your attention.
If you have any questions, you can send them to Dr. Elmer Huerta on Twitter. You can also go to CNNE.com/coronaviruspodcast for all the episodes of our podcast “Coronavirus: Reality vs. fiction".
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