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Hydroxychloroquine fails to prevent COVID-19 in rigorous study - CBS News

Hydroxychloroquine fails to prevent COVID-19 in rigorous study - CBS News

Hydroxychloroquine fails to prevent COVID-19 in rigorous study - CBS News
Jun 04, 2020 1 min, 33 secs

A malaria drug President Donald Trump took to try to prevent COVID-19 proved ineffective for that in the first large, high-quality study to test it in people in close contact with someone with the disease.

Results published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine show that hydroxychloroquine was no better than placebo pills at preventing illness from the coronavirus.

"But our objective was to answer the question and to conduct a high-quality study," because the evidence on the drug so far has been inconclusive, he said.

They were randomly assigned to get either the nutrient folate as a placebo or hydroxychloroquine for five days, starting within four days of their exposure.

After 14 days in the study, 12% on the drug developed COVID-19 symptoms versus 14% in the placebo group, but the difference is so small it could have occurred by chance, Boulware said.

This study was in younger relatively healthy people, but the results "would make me very discouraged about trying to use this in older people" who are most vulnerable to serious illness from the coronavirus, Bach said.

Dan Culver, a lung specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, said there's still a chance that giving the drug sooner than four days after someone's exposure to the virus may help prevent illness.

But the study "takes 'home run' off the table" as far as hopes for the drug, he said.

Boulware also is leading a study testing hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19.

On Tuesday, the journal Lancet posted an "expression of concern" about a study it published earlier this month of nearly 15,000 COVID-19 patients on the malaria drugs that tied their use to a higher risk of dying in the hospital or developing a heartbeat problem.

That work had a big impact: the World Health Organization suspended use of hydroxychloroquine in a study it is leading, and French officials stopped the drug's use in hospitals.

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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