I take every study with a massive grain of salt, [especially one this size], until solid meta-analysis is done, but this is more promising than I expected for hydroxychloroquine <i>without</i> zinc:<p>><i>Conclusion: in a cohort of 166 patients from 18 to 85 years hospitalised with COVID-19, hydroxychloroquine treatment with an 800mg added loading dose increased the cumulative mean survival according to the diagnosis of severity at the beginning by 1.4 to 1.8 times. This difference was statistically significant when the clinical picture at admission was mild.</i>
“This version is not peer-reviewed”<p>Here’s the problem with preprints like this:<p><i>In an earlier era, issues with the Santa Clara study would have been addressed during peer review—the process in which scientific work is assessed by other researchers before being published in a journal. But like many COVID-19 studies, this one was uploaded as a preprint—a paper that hasn’t yet run the peer-review gauntlet. Preprints allow scientists to share data quickly, and speed is vital in a pandemic: Several important studies were uploaded and discussed a full month before being published.</i><p><i>Preprints also allow questionable work to directly enter public discourse, but that problem is not unique to them. The first flawed paper on hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19 was published in a peer-reviewed journal, whose editor in chief is one of the study’s co-authors.</i>[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-...</a>
I’m so ready to get past observational studies to real proper double-blind research, The first should go to pre-print next week.<p>This is hopeful though.
> In the study of 368 patients, 97 patients who took hydroxychloroquine had a 27.8% death rate. The 158 patients who did not take the drug had an 11.4% death rate.<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/21/health/hydroxychloroquine-veterans-study/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/21/health/hydroxychloroquine-vet...</a><p>Personally, when I find two studies report opposite conclusions, I take a neutral position. Neutral meaning: lets give drugs to people who need them instead of using a lupus drug to treat flu symptoms.<p>Might as well try Benadryl and Tylenol first.
“ Age distribution according to the severity at admission was homogeneous between HCQ and non- HCQ treatment groups when the clinical picture was mild (57,6 years HCQ – 58,4 years non-HCQ, p=0,865) or moderate (63,8 years HCQ – 70 years non-HCQ, p=0,269). ”<p>Those are some high p-values. Makes sense with a small control group of 43 people.
This paper can be put in the bin labeled “no statically significance”