Surprising HCQ study found it cut mortality among Covid patients. But not a trial, & simultaneous steroid use in HCQ-use patients was >2x than the un-treated. Relevant cuz the steroid dexamethasone also cuts mortality in seriously ill #COVID19 patients. 🤔 cnn.com/2020/07/02/hea…
2) “A team at Henry Ford Health System in southeast Michigan said Thursday their study of 2,541 hospitalized patients found that those given hydroxychloroquine were much less likely to die.”
3) “Dr. Marcus Zervos, division head of infectious disease for Henry Ford Health System, said 26% of those not given hydroxychloroquine died, compared to 13% of those who got the drug. The team looked back at everyone treated in the hospital system since first patient in March.”
4) “"Overall crude mortality rates were 18.1% in the entire cohort, 13.5% in the hydroxychloroquine alone group, 20.1% among those receiving HCQ plus azithromycin, 22.4% among the azithromycin alone group, and 26.4% for neither drug," published in Int’l J of Infectious Diseases.”
5) “Researchers not involved in the Henry Ford study pointed out it wasn't of same quality showing hydroxychloroquine did not help patients, and said other treatments, such as the use of the steroid dexamethasone, might have accounted for better survival of some patients.”
6) “Our results do differ from some other studies," Zervos said. "What we think was important in ours ... is that patients were treated early. For HCQ to have benefit, it needs to begin before the patients begin to suffer severe immune reactions that patients can have with Covid”
7) “The Henry Ford team also monitored patients carefully for heart problems, he said.
"The combination of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin was reserved for selected patients with severe COVID-19 and with minimal cardiac risk factors," the team wrote.
"The combination of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin was reserved for selected patients with severe COVID-19 and with minimal cardiac risk factors," the team wrote.
8) “Kalkanis said that their findings do not necessarily contradict those of earlier studies. "We also want to make the point that just because our results differ from some others that may have been published, it doesn't make those studies wrong or definitely a conflict.”
9) “What it simply means is that by looking at the nuanced data of which patients actually benefited and when, we might be able to further unlock the code of how this disease works. Much more work needs to be done to elucidate what the final treatment plan should be for Covid-19”
10) “"But we feel ... that these are critically important results to add to the mix of how we move forward if there's a second surge, and in relevant other parts of the world. Now we can help people combat this disease and to reduce the mortality rate."
11) “Researchers not involved with the study were critical. They noted that the Henry Ford team did not randomly treat patients but selected them for various treatments based on certain criteria.”
12) “"As the Henry Ford Health System became more experienced in treating patients with COVID-19, survival may have improved, regardless of the use of specific therapies," Dr. Todd Lee of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Canada, and colleagues wrote in a commentary”
13) “"Finally, concomitant steroid use in patients receiving HCQ was more than double the non-treated group. This is relevant considering the recent RECOVERY trial that showed a mortality benefit with dexamethasone." steroid dexamethasone can reduce death in seriously ill
14) “Rosenberg also pointed out that the Detroit paper excluded 267 patients -- nearly 10% of the study population -- who had not yet been discharged from the hospital.
He said this might have skewed the results to make hydroxychloroquine look better than it really was.
He said this might have skewed the results to make hydroxychloroquine look better than it really was.
15) “Those patients might have still been in the hospital because they were very sick, and if they died, excluding them from the study made hydroxychloroquine look like more of a lifesaver than it really was.
"There's a little bit of loosey-goosiness here in all this,"
"There's a little bit of loosey-goosiness here in all this,"
16) “While helpful, observational studies are not as valuable as controlled clinical trials. Considered the gold standard in medicine, patients in a clinical trial are randomly assigned to take either the drug or a placebo, which is a treatment that does nothing.”
17) “Two clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19, one in the US and one in the UK, were stopped early because their data suggested hydroxychloroquine wasn't helpful.”
