FDA: Studies Underway to Evaluate Chloroquine for COVID-19 - MPR
CURED after 6 days.
Chloroquine and azithromycin were potent together.
Recently, findings were announced from an open-label study investigating hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19 at The Méditerranée Infection University Hospital Institute in Marseille, France. Patients received oral hydroxychloroquine 200mg 3 times daily for 10 days (n=20), and those who refused were part of the control group (n=16). Patients were included if they were 12 years of age and older, and had PCR documented SARS-CoV-2 carriage in nasopharyngeal samples at admission. Treatment with antibiotics (eg, azithromycin) was also provided to patients to prevent bacterial infections. The primary end point was virological clearance at day 6 post-inclusion.
Results of the study showed that by day 6 post-inclusion, 70% of hydroxychloroquine-treated patients were virologically cured vs 12.5% in the control group (P =.001). Moreover, at day 6 post-inclusion, 100% of patients treated with hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin were virologically cured compared with 57.1% of patients with hydroxychloroquine only and 12.5% of the control group (P <.001). A significant difference between the hydroxychloroquine and control groups was reported as early as day 3 post-inclusion.
Study investigators noted that 1 patient treated with hydroxychloroquine who was still PCR-positive at day 6 post-inclusion was given azithromycin in addition to hydroxychloroquine at day 8, and was virologically cured at day 9. Conversely, 1 patient treated with the combination therapy who tested negative at day 6, tested positive at low titer at day 8. While the results look promising, the researchers noted limitations to their study including small sample size, limited long-term outcome follow-up, and dropout of 6 patients from the study.