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Does hydroxychloroquine work against covid-19? 0:50
(CNN) - Coronavirus patients taking hydroxychloroquine, a treatment promoted by the US President Donald Trump were no less likely to need mechanical ventilation and had higher death rates compared to those who did not take the drug, according to a study of hundreds of patients at the United States Veterans Health Administration.
In the study of 368 patients, 97 patients who took hydroxychloroquine had a mortality rate of 27.8%. The 158 patients who did not take the drug had a mortality rate of 11.4%.
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"An association of increased overall mortality was identified in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone. These findings highlight the importance of waiting for the results of ongoing prospective, randomized and controlled studies before widespread adoption of these medications, "wrote the authors, who work at the Columbia Veterans Health Care System in South Carolina, the University of South Carolina and the University of Virginia
The researchers also looked at whether taking hydroxychloroquine or a combination of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin had an effect on whether a patient needed to go to a ventilator. They found that there was no difference between these groups and the patients who did not take any drugs.
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"In this study, we found no evidence that the use of hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in hospitalized patients with covid-19," the authors wrote.
The study, which reviewed veterans' medical records, was published Tuesday on medrxiv.org, a prepress server, meaning it was not peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia.
