Effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 disease: A done and dusted deal?
Antonella D’arminio Monforte, Alessandro Tavelli, Francesca Bai, Giulia Marchetti, Alessandro Cozzi-Lepri
International Journal of Infectious Diseases, doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2020.07.056
A total of 539 COVID-19 hospitalized patients were included in our cohort in Milan, from February 24 to May 17, 2020, of whom 174 died in hospital (day 14 probability of death: 29.5% -95%CI: 25.5-34.0). We divided a subset of our cohort into three groups who started treatment a median of 1 day after admission: those receiving hydroxychloroquine alone (N = 197), those receiving hydroxycholoroquine + azithromycin (N = 94), and those receiving neither (controls) (N = 92). Of the latter group, ten started HIV antivirals (boosted-lopinavir or -darunavir), one teicoplanin, twelve immunomodulatory drugs, or corticosteroids, 23 heparin and 46 remained untreated. The percent of death in the three groups was 27%, 23%, and 51%. Mechanical ventilation was used in 4.3% of hydroxychloroquine, 14.2% of hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin, and 26.1% of controls. Unweighted and weighted relative hazards of mortality are shown in Table 1 . After adjusting * Adjusted for age, gender, number of comorbidities, CVD (yes/no), duration of symptoms, date of admission, CRP and censoring using IPW. £ The overall estimate was also adjusted for baseline COVID-19 disease severity. # Heparin, immuno-modulatory drugs, HIV antivirals, combinations of these or no drugs at all. & 45 patients missing baseline PO2/FiO2 not included in the stratified analysis.
Declarations of interest None declared.
Ethical approval This analysis is part of the study approved by Ethic Committee Area 1, Milan Italy (2020/ST/049 and 2020/ST/049_BIS, 11/03/ 2020).
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