Study: HCQ is ineffective as preventive antiviral against coronavirus

According to a new study published in the journal ‘Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases’, anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is not a possible defence against Covid-19 in patients with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. The research has been done by few researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Researchers have focussed on patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and RA because HCQ intake of these patients is frequent. Informal reports during the early stages of the pandemic showed that these patients were unaffected by the Covid-19 virus. Therefore, researchers then explored HCQ in the lab and found it effective against the virus.

HCQ not effective for Covid-19

According to the study, there are more recent studies that have established how HCQ is not effective in treating moderate-to-severe hospitalized cases. However, treatment with HCQ early in the disease or for mild cases is still under review. Mendel Singer, lead author of the study from the case Western Reserve University in the US said that, “Our study shows, with a large degree of confidence, that HCQ is ineffective as a preventive antiviral in people with SLE and/or RA taking drugs that suppress their immune system, putting them at greater risk. Given how the study was structured, one can make an educated extension that it is not effective in preventing COVID-19 in people without those conditions. It is not uncommon for something to show promise in the lab, and then prove ineffective in the more complex biological landscape of humans”. 

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As a part of the study, large importance was given to the national database. De-identified patient data was pulled out from 36 health systems and then a much larger study than previous work was compiled. The previous studies had fewer than 20 Covid-19 patients with SLE and/or RA. However, this study had 159 Covid-19 patients. This study showed that patients with SLE or RA who contracted COVID-19 were just as likely to be taking HCQ as SLE or RA patients who did not get COVID-19. Mendel Singer said that “By drawing on data from a relatively large patient population with lupus and/or RA, we can offer a higher level of confidence in our findings”.

He added, “We see from this large retrospective review that this drug is ineffective in preventing COVID-19 in these patients who have been taking HCQ. If HCQ were effective in prevention, we would have seen fewer HCQ-taking SLE/RA patients with COVID-19, but did not. This likely means that HCQ is not active against the SARS-CoV-2 virus in humans—versus in the lab—and is unlikely to be an effective preventive antiviral for anyone”. 

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Singer was accompanied by David Kaelber who is a professor of internal medicine, pediatrics, and population and quantitative health sciences and co-director of the Center for Education and Training in Health Informatics at the School of Medicine and chief medical informatics officer at The MetroHealth System. Maria Antonelli was also a part of the research. She is a professor of medicine at the School of Medicine and a rheumatologist at The MetroHealth System. The TriNetX Research Network which is a federated health-research network provided data for patients. 

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