Peacedog wrote:Another hydroxychloroquine study out of Belgium. This one showed about a 1/3rd reduction in fatalities amongst hospitalized patients across the board (17% treated versus 27% untreated). Not a bad finding.
Certainly no miracle cure, but if I were laid up in the hospital I’d want this therapy.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... via%3Dihub
Thanks for including a link to the study. I think that you are misinterpreting the data. For example, there was reported 17.7% deaths for those treated with HCQ and 27.1% for no-HCQ, but this means that the IMPROVEMENT was only for <10% of the patients when compared with the no-CHQ patients (27.1-17.7=9.4); this is NOT a “1/3 reduction.” Still, that is significant and should be considered when treatment options are considered.
The positive of the study are that it analyzed a relatively large number of patients (HCQ n=4542, No-HCQ n=3533), the negative is that the treatment was not randomized, and the reasons for treating some patients and not others is not specified. This lack of randomization could lead to biases and lack of rigor for the results. Also, because the mortality rate for these patients is so high (almost 22% of those included in the study), they are probably only looking at the sickest people and this probably cannot be generalized to less sick patients.
Some information from the data (table 2):
1) The mean age for those receiving treatment with HCQ was 66 (54-78) whereas that for no-HCQ was 77 (63-85). Since we know that age is a significant factor in the mortality from this disease, then could the improved results from HCQ treatment be simply due to the age difference of the two groups (those treated with HCQ compared with those not receiving HCQ treatments)?
2) A higher percentage of the no-HCQ patients had pre-existing cardiovascular disease (40.9% vs. 30.7%). Since we know that co-morbidities also affects survival from COVID-19, could this 10.2% difference account for the 9.4% difference shown between these two groups?
There are too many uncertainties in this study to be anywhere close to being definitive. More studies with better controls would need to be carried out.