Question: I see hydroxychloroquine in the news a lot these days. Would you please share a synthesis?

Answer: Sure! So, first reason for all the news is that there was a big observational study about hydroxychloroquine’s role in COVID-19 patient treatment recently published in The Lancet and metwith lots of press. Scientists quickly raised alarms about the data used in the analysis — a data set that was heretofore unknown, owned by a private company, and with far too many inconsistencies and implausible data to be true. Based on this alarm and at the request of the study authors who stated,”we can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources,” the study was retracted yesterday. In the wake of this storm, the New England Medical Journal on Wednesday published results of a randomized control trial by Boulware et al. examining whether hydroxycholorquine can serve as effective post-exposure prophylaxis (e.g. prevent COVID-19 infection among those exposed). Researchers found that hydroxycholoquine did not protect exposed individuals from getting COVID-19 (detailed in the below paragraph). That said, the study had many limitations, as discussed by the accompanying NEMJ editorial, which concludes that “The results reported by Boulware et al. are more provocative than definitive, suggesting that the potential prevention benefits of hydroxychloroquine remain to be determined.” With 212 studies of COVID-19 and hydroxycholoquine listed on clinicaltrials.gov (as of today), we should soon have more data for decision-making!

“The incidence of new illness compatible with Covid-19 did not differ significantly between participants receiving hydroxychloroquine (49 of 414 [11.8%]) and those receiving placebo (58 of 407 [14.3%]); the absolute difference was −2.4 percentage points (95% confidence interval, −7.0 to 2.2; P=0.35). Side effects were more common with hydroxychloroquine than with placebo (40.1% vs. 16.8%), but no serious adverse reactions were reported.”