Thread by @FutureMDvsCOVID

1/7 #ManuscriptMonday! 📄 Let’s talk about chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which were recently FDA-approved for treatment of COVID-19. There has been a lot of hype and misinformation surrounding the drugs. One particular study by Gautret et al. ⬇️ was published...

2/7 ...in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, and tweeted by President Trump as “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” Since then, patients who take the drugs for other reasons, such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus...

3/7 ...have had trouble accessing them due to others stockpiling the medication for their own, off-label use. One American has died and another has been hospitalized due to self-medication with chloroquine phosphate. Many scientists have called the results of the study...

4/7 ...into question for several reasons: 1) There were ethical issues with approval for the study, 2) it did not have proper experimental controls, 3) the study has missing data for 6 patients, 4) the study was not transparent in how it presented results, 5) the sample size...

5/7 ...is too small to draw any conclusions from, 6) the study was cherry-picked its patients, and 7) it was peer reviewed in a day, which suggests a fraudulent review process. In addition, one of the authors is the Editor in Chief of the journal in which...

6/7 ...it was published ⬇️--a significant conflict of interest. Thus, it’s very important that we wait for stronger evidence and think critically about these studies before using potentially dangerous drugs. There are several ongoing clinical trials that are testing...

7/7 ...hydroxychloroquine as treatment for COVID-19 that will help clear up these results.

To read more about the problems with the hydroxychloroquine study, peep this source: scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/03/24/tho…

#ManuscriptMonday #MythBusters #TheImportanceofHonestScience #COVID_19