“The use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine in COVID-19 is based on popular publicity of limited, uncontrolled trials, indicating that the combination of hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin macrolide was effective in clearing viral replication
On March 28, 2020, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for these drugs in patients if clinical trial access was unavailable.
Many countries have released recommendations enabling the use of chloroquine in COVID-19, for example, China.
Many countries stored the medications and there was a lack of them for approved indications, such as autoimmune and rheumatoid arthritis
This study included all patients hospitalized at registry participating hospitals and with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 infection between Dec 20 , 2019 and April 14, 2020, for whom a clinical outcome of either hospital discharge or death was recorded during hospitalization.
96 032 hospitalized patients from 671 hospitals were infected with COVID-19 between 20 Dec 2019 and 14 April 2020 and fulfilled the requirements for inclusion in this report.
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Conclusion:
In this large multinational real-world analysis, researchers did not observe any benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine (when used alone or in combination with a macrolide) on in-hospital outcomes, when initiated early after diagnosis of COVID-19.
Each of the drug regimens of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine alone or in combination with a macrolide was associated with an increased hazard for the clinically significant occurrence of ventricular arrhythmias and increased risk of in-hospital death with COVID-19.”
Ref:
“https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext
