Physician group claims that hydroxychloroquine helps 91% of coronavirus patients

The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine has improved survival and recovery rates for about 90 percent of patients treated with the controversial medication, a group of doctors claim.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) presented data on 2,333 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine – including two under the supervision of Dr. Oz – around the world, showing that 91.6 percent of those who got the drug better after treatment did better.

In a letter to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, the group insisted that doctors should not wait for the gold standard tests results of the drug to start using it in coronavirus patients and to base its use on it instead reasonable interpretations of limited data.

AAPS’s approval of the drug comes after a Veteran Affairs investigation of hydroxychloroquine found that those who took the drug were more likely to die, casting doubt on the possible treatment that President Trump has praised a game changer.

The group of doctors rejected those preliminary results, claiming that the 52 people who died were very ill, meaning their results are ‘not indicative’ of the effects of hydroxychloroquine and that the drug would work better if used in patients with less critical illness.

AAPS, which opposes what it calls “health care reform,” including Medicare for All proposals, presents “information from some larger patient groups, in addition to reports on individual patients.

‘Waiting for randomized randomized controlled trials during a pandemic when time is of the essence, a Bayesian approach to assessment of diagnostic and therapeutic probabilities is sensible and efficient and will save time, money and life if physicians are given the opportunity to improve their autonomy and practice medicine to the best of their ability, ‘the group writes.

The Bayesian method, referred to several times throughout the letter, is a statistical approach that assesses opportunities on a rolling basis and derives a reasonable expectation based on available data.

In other words, the group says that doctors should not wait for a large amount of data to draw conclusions about whether or not hydroxychloroquine works and that it is safe, but assume that it is based on databases like theirs, which they say is regularly updated.

It reflects the President’s feelings, “What have you got to lose?” he asked coronavirus patients while praising the promise of hydroxychloroquine at a recent news conference.

“Somehow I don’t look at it. But we want to get out of here. If it works, it would be a shame if we hadn’t done it early.

‘What I know? I am not a doctor, but I have common sense. The FDA feels good about it because you know they approved it. ‘

The FDA gave emergency doctors permission to prescribe hydroxychloroquine to some coronavirus patients, as well as a way to facilitate data collection on how people with the virus tolerate the drug, as it proved promising to help them.

Regulators did not approve the drug for the treatment of coronavirus, a point that Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading US infectious disease expert and coronavirus task group member, underlined.

When asked if there was any evidence that hydroxychloroquine works to treat the coronavirus, Dr. Fauci: No. The answer is no, “referring to the absence of clinical trials for the drug, reminding viewers that reports of its use for coronavirus patients were only anecdotal.

Much of the ‘clinical information’ mentioned in the AAPS letter falls definitively into the anecdotal category.

Their table includes reports from China, France, South Korea, Algeria, and the U.S., as well as references to the prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine to protect health professionals in countries such as Turkey and India.

Some of the reports in the table are relatively large studies, such as Dr. Vladmir Zelenko of 405 of the 1,345 coronavirus patients in New York with hydroxychloroquine, and even the Veteran Affairs study of more than 200 patients.

But most of the data comes from small or one-time use of the drug. Multiple rows in the table do not indicate information other than the name of the physician involved, a number concerns only one patient.

Dr. Oz reported that 100 percent of the patients he treated with hydroxychloroquine improved and survived. There were two patients.

One of the people on the data table is Mark Campbell, a former tight end for the Buffalo Bills who was hospitalized for coronavirus.

No treating physician has been reported for Campbell, but the success rate from the one-person study of hydroxychloroquine in him is listed as 100 percent.

Campbell has spoken openly of his experience with coronavirus, including receiving several days of treatment with Plaquenil, the brand-name form of hydroxychloroquine, while in the hospital under the supervision of a physician.

Where or by whom he was treated is unclear and is not listed in the AAPS database, and the FDA warned Monday about the use of hydroxychloroquine outside of the hospital or without a doctor’s supervision.

The database also contains no fields for reporting adverse reactions or adverse reactions to treatment, only the names of the person or institution reporting the data and when, the number of COVID-19 patients seen, the number treated with hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin or zinc, how much improved, how much died, and the resulting success rate.

At least one trial with hydroxychloroquine, conducted in Brazil, was discontinued shortly after a number of patients experienced arrhythmias, a known and potentially life-threatening side effect of hydroxychloroquine.

The collection of AAPS reports has a net success rate of 91.6 percent for patients treated with hydroxychloroquine, and a death rate of 2.7 percent.

It compares this to Johns Hopkins’ survival data for patients placed on mechanical respirators, of whom about 85 percent died. Almost seven percent of the patients had died worldwide.

“Currently, data from nine observational reports and one controlled study suggest that hydroxychloroquine is dramatically more effective at preventing CoVID-19 death than mechanical ventilation,” the AAPS writes.

It is encouraging to note that ventilated patients treated with hydroxychloroquine have successfully extubated and been transferred from the intensive care unit to the floor. In addition, the viral load of CoVID-19 has decreased to low or undetectable levels after 5-15 days of treatment with hydroxychloroquine. ‘

Laboratory studies have suggested that hydroxychloroquine may have antiviral effects, although it is not an antiviral design. It was also found to combat the effects of the cytokine storm.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and many groups are conducting clinical trials with it, but full results are not yet in.

AAPS states that doctors should continue to try the drug, despite a lack of definitive data.

The group is not alone in supporting ways to accelerate and streamline testing of various possible treatments for coronavirus.

Dr. FDA’s Janet Woodcock has advocated “ adaptive ” studies that test multiple treatments against one control arm to save time and resources – especially human.

Bioethicists, including Dr. Arthur Kaplan of New York University, said that potential coronavirus vaccines should be tried in healthy volunteers sooner than later, because the benefits outweigh the risks.

And the facilitation of approval processes by the FDA to signal its own agenda of urgency.

A Bayse approach such as supporting AAPS is not without use, but the data from which the group draws its conclusions and makes recommendations is not comparable to controlled, in-depth studies of hydroxychloroquine or other possible coronavirus treatments.

In fact, when the West African Ebola crisis started, researchers rushed to create treatments and conduct quick compassionate studies without placebo arms because it seemed cruel to deny possible treatments to some patients.

But many of those early tests eventually failed, and as a result, it took years to find an effective treatment for the devastating hemorrhagic fever.