The Lancet HCQ study report: A knee-jerker during pandemic?

Praised as a potential miracle cure, hundreds of trials got initiated across the globe for HCQ. Scientists started trying the drugs in low and high doses; alone or combined with other drugs in patients with mild or severe disease. But this hope recently got struck by a big blow when a study came along claiming that these antimalarial drugs not only look ineffective but are downright deadly.

- Dr Neel Fofaria

The absence of an effective treatment against the coronavirus infection has led clinicians to redirect drugs that are known to be effective for other medical conditions to the treatment of COVID-19. Key among these repurposed therapeutic agents are the antimalarial drug chloroquine (CQ) and its analogue hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), which is used for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Praised as a potential miracle cure, hundreds of trials got initiated across the globe for HCQ. Scientists started trying the drugs in low and high doses; alone or combined with other drugs in patients with mild or severe disease.

But this hope recently got struck by a big blow when a study came along claiming that these antimalarial drugs not only look ineffective but are downright deadly. This study, published on May 22 in the elite journal The Lancet, was conducted by three researchers- Dr Mandeep R Mehra from Brigham and Women’s Hospital Heart and Vascular Center and Harvard Medical School, US; Frank Ruschitzka from university Heart Center, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland; and Dr Amit N Patel from Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, US.

They used hospital records procured by an American healthcare analytics company Surgisphere Corporation, established in 2008 by an Indian Sapan Desai, for their study. According to their findings, COVID-19 patients taking CQ or HCQ were associated with an increase in the risk of ventricular arrhythmias and a greater hazard for in-hospital death with COVID-19. The study concluded that these drug regimens should not be used outside of clinical trials and urgent confirmation from randomised clinical trials is needed.