Better Science - Comments

John Doe: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (John Doe) — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 11:05:20 +0200

Not true I think:
1. There were 2 published chinese studies: one of them with 30 participants (15 treatment + 15 controll) which indicated that HCQ doesn't work (they had 400mg per day, while the French had 600mg) and another one with 62 participants (31+31) indicating that HCQ helps.
2. The second French trial is much better - it has 80 participants. No control group but in statistics you can have two sample tests and one sample tests. In a one sample test you would test in general some kind of goodness of fit wrt some baseline distribution, which we obviously have in the face of more than 1 million detected infections worldwide. I understand their objection against the controll group version of the test - it is cruel to give people a fake pill in the midst of a severe pandemic. Out of these 80 participants they had more than 50% with preconditions like diabetes, hypertension etc.
Summing it up - focusing on only two sample tests is in my view dogmating in the current situation. One can also work with one sample goodness of fit tests
3. Indirect indicator: on clinicaltrails.gov you can see several large trials starting which are about to test the efficacy of HCQ regarding the covid-19. These are expesive undertakings - do you think they will be started if there was no good indication they would produce good results

Cheers

Hanno Böck: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 18:39:15 +0200

There's only one new trial that has been published in the meantime, it's from china and if anything, it indicates that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work.

Raoult has published another paper, but that's even less meaningful than the first one, it doesn't have a control group at all. That's not a clinical trial.

John Doe: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (John Doe) — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 18:18:28 +0200

There were several new trials started the beginning of this week, one of them in France. Apparently it got good results:
https://www.france24.com/en/video/20200327-france-sanctions-use-of-chloroquine-for-certain-patients-with-coronavirus

Jerome M Taylor: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (Jerome M Taylor) — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 20:07:30 +0100

Are you a member of the nattering nabobs of negativism??

Hanno Böck: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 10:28:41 +0100

I discussed the first two papers you refer to in the blogpost.

One doesn't contain any evidence, just a list of trials registry entries. The other is in vitro evidence, it means that the drug works in a petri dish, not in a human.

The in vitro evidence is a justification for further research, but certainly nothing more. Unfinished or unpublished trials trials aren't evidence for anything.

amc: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (amc) — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 10:20:36 +0100

China has been publishing results since February that Chloroquine has been successful against COVID-19.

Letter Referencing Chinese Recommendations, Studies, and Papers:
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bst/advpub/0/advpub_2020.01047/_pdf

Chinese Paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0

Paper Showing Chloroquine was effective against SARS (an extremely similar virus, this virus is called SARS-COV-2 because of it's similarities)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15351731

Anyways, there is much more evidence then one preliminary French study that Chloroquine and related drugs will help against COVID-19 (SARS-COV-2).

F30: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (F30) — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 10:16:03 +0100

@gocorona: These national guidelines do not incorporate magical knowledge nobody else has available. The only thing I know about the Dutch guidelines is what is cited on page 9 of the Belgian document you linked to, so I'm just gonna discuss the Belgian ones.

On pages 2 and 3 (for the record, we're talking about version 4 here), they refer to the in-vitro studies (footnotes 6 and 14), an ongoing Chinese clinical trial (footnote 12) and the clinical study discussed right here (footnote 15). They mention "Substantial reduction of […] viral load […] compared to placebo", which I think is a false interpretation of that study. The Chloroquine paragraph on page 4 also explains that the recommendation is based on in-vitro studies and the French clinical study discussed here.

gocorona: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (gocorona) — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 05:49:00 +0100

what about Belgium and Netherlands using it as preferred treatment?

https://epidemio.wiv-isp.be/ID/Documents/Covid19/COVID-19_InterimGuidelines_Treatment_ENG.pdf

andrew korf: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (andrew korf) — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 22:09:56 +0100

There is trial being don the right way on the efficacy of Thalidomide for treating Covid19. Looks like results are due by the end of the week... there's a reason why we do things the right way.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04273529

F30: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (F30) — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 18:35:35 +0100

@tgafpc: What do you mean by "the Australians"? This here? https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2020/03/researchers-set-begin-clinical-trials-coronavirus-treatment

They have started a clinical trial, after "some patients" have "completely recovered without any trace of the virus left in their system". Which, as they admit themselves, most patients do after all.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but I've now followed a lot of claims that there was strong evidence. And I couldn't find any published clinical study, besides the weak one discussed here.

tgafpc: About that Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 trial

nospam@example.com (tgafpc) — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 12:38:22 +0100

And the Australians? There's more evidence than just that one study.
50% efficacy is game changing in this case. Just saying.

Klaus Mueller: Chocolate, weight loss, bad studies and bad journalism

nospam@example.com (Klaus Mueller) — Fri, 05 May 2017 11:38:36 +0200

"the first big one was "Bild", the largest German newspaper."
.
For non German readers it should be added, that this newspaper has a very bad image. For good reasons. It's "tabloid journalism" of the worst kind.

rugk: Chocolate, weight loss, bad studies and bad journalism

nospam@example.com (rugk) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:05:15 +0200

The first link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlPW3ymtIaA) returns "This video is not available" on YouTube.