The Needless Controversy Over Use Of Hydroxychloroquine To Treat Covid-19

A piece of good news from the controversy over the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients was the decision by the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) which is one of Nigeria’s top regulatory

agencies for the approval of drugs for use by the public saying that it was going ahead with the clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of coronavirus patients even when the World Health Organization (WHO) had claimed that the drug is killing the patients and thus has stopped the clinical trial of the drug for covid-19 patients.

 

NAFDAC insisted that the drug has been very effective in treating patients in Nigeria at the early stage of the virus. NAFDAC deserves commendation for standing up to the WHO and doing what is right for Nigeria. And recent developments have also vindicated the stance of NAFDAC, showing that the agency was absolutely right not to throw away the baby with the bathwater!

 

Meanwhile three of the authors of a study which found that taking the anti-malaria drug could increase the risk of mortality in COVID-19 patients have retracted their paper. The study, released on May 22 in The Lancet medical journal, led to several clinical trials into the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 being halted. The Lancet said in a statement that the authors were "unable to complete an independent audit of the data underpinning their analysis" which

had been provided by Surgisphere, a healthcare analytics company based in the US.  "As a result, they have concluded that they "can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources"," The Lancet statement added.

 

The observational analysis looked at nearly 100,000 COVID-19 patients worldwide, including nearly 15,000 who were treated with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine. It concluded that there were no benefits to taking the drugs for COVID-19 patients and that there was instead a greater risk of heart problems. Hydroxychloroquine has been much hyped as a COVID-19 treatment since French doctor Didier Raoult said he was treating patients in Marseille with the drug and an antibiotic. A study he published was however dismissed as too small. But health authorities worldwide, including the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched their own clinical trials to determine the drug's efficiency to combat the novel coronavirus, stressing however that patients should not self-administer the drug because of the risk of serious side effects. Many of the trials were halted after the release of the study, including in France.

 

The WHO's Solidarity Trial Executive Group, which implemented a temporary pause of its trial because of concerns over the drug's safety, announced on Wednesday, June 3, 2020 that it had "endorsed the continuation of all arms of the trial, including the use of hydroxychloroquine".

 

Perhaps it is the no love lost between the media and President Donald Trump that ignited the controversy over the use of hydroxychloroquine. President Donald Trump did not only shook the table when he unexpectedly defeated the establishment favorite at the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, he upturned the table and since then things have fallen apart in Washington politics and indeed the whole country and the center cannot hold. Since Trump’s victory in 2016 which

this writer was among the few in the world that saw it coming the agenda of the Left in United States and their media establishment led by the CNN, CNBC, New York Times, Time and others with the exception of Fox News is to bring

his government down, impeach him and disgrace him out of office or at best discredit anything he stood for. It was therefore expected that the predominant liberal media in the US that worshipped under the altar of their god, Barack Obama

would turn the coronavirus pandemic that originated from China against Donald Trump. All their past efforts (Russian election interference, impeachment) fall flat on their face because the US economy was doing fantastic and unemployment rate was at all-time low and the reelection of Trump was inevitable, and then came coronavirus! Coronavirus is their last attempt to discredit, demonize and ensure that Trump is not reelected.

 

You could therefore see how they jumped with joy in condemnation when Trump proposed that the malarial drug, hydroxycloroquine could be used to treat the coronavirus ( a disease that has no medicine). He was randomly condemned for promoting a drug that is ’killing people’ even when

the President cited that his recommendation was based on other countries that have successfully used the drug to treat the virus. A typical example of a country where the drug has been used successfully to treat coronavirus is Nigeria where

the Bauchi State governor Bala Mohammed said that when he tested positive to the virus that one of the key drugs that restored his health was hydroxychloroquine, and even went further to assert that the drug was at the center of whatever is

administered to covid-19 patients in his state and that most of the patients like him have recovered from the disease. Even in Nigeria the medical establishment including the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) tried to shut the mouth

of the governor but he could not be silenced and he proudly repeats to whoever cares to listen, that hydroxychloroquine worked for him. The governor also presented an interesting case. This is a governor that had been sick severally even

before the outbreak of covid-19 in Nigeria and was abroad for medical treatment when the Supreme Court ruled in his favor as the duly elected governor of the state. He is also not a young man at 62 years and may have underlying sickness

before he was infected by Covid-19. His case put doubt on claims that even if hydroxychloroquine works it is for young healthy people and not for the elderly and those with pre-existing illnesses like high blood pressure, diabetes etc.

 

As if the media in the United States has not had enough, recently President Donald Trump announced that he is taking hydroxychloroquine as a precaution against the coronavirus which once again throw the decades-old antimalarial drug into the headlines. However, here’s what some scientists know about the drug and its potential. The antimalarial drug also has well-known antiviral activity against many viruses, including SARS and MERS. At least they work against those viruses in

lab dishes. In lab tests, hydroxychloroquine can also stop SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, from infecting cells and decreases replication of viruses that do get inside cells, researchers report March 18 in Cell Reports. A February 4 report in Cell Research found that chloroquine also inhibits the virus. The drug is thought to block viruses from entering cells by changing the pH, or acidity, of cellular compartments called lysosomes. That creates a less friendly environment for the virus, so it might be more difficult for the virus to get into human cells in the first place, according to Michael Avidan, an anesthesiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Avidan is

involved in a clinical trial testing whether chloroquine can protect healthcare workers from infection or from developing serious disease. In addition, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine disrupt interactions between some of SARS-CoV-2’s proteins with proteins called sigma receptors in human cells, researchers report April 30 in Nature. Interrupting those protein interactions may make it difficult for the virus to replicate, says study coauthor Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, a microbiologist who directs the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Together, those antiviral capabilities make the drugs attractive for use against the coronavirus. But

there’s another important reason chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were some of the first drugs pressed into action: They’re available. Doctors have been prescribing the drugs, already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for decades and they’re generally safe, although with side effects like most drugs. The largest study to date, published May 22 in the Lancet, found that the drugs raised the risk of death for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The findings are based on data from more than 96,000 coronavirus patients in 671 hospitals on six continents. Of those, nearly 15,000 received either chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, either alone or in combination with a type of antibiotic called

macrolides — usually azithromycin. The researchers accounted for risk factors, including age, obesity, sex, underlying diseases, smoking and the severity of COVID-19 at the start of treatment. Among people taking hydroxychloroquine alone, 18 percent died; 16.4 percent of those taking chloroquine alone died; and combining either drug with a macrolide was associated with even higher numbers of deaths. The drugs were also associated with heart rhythm irregularities.

 

Now for a disease that has no cure 16.4 per cent of those treated with chloroquine died, while 18 per cent of those who the drug, hydroxychloroquine was administered to died, which means that 82 per cent of those treated with hydroxychloroquine SURVIVED! 82 per cent were saved to see their family and friends again and WHO is relying on that to claim that the drug raised the risk of death when they have not shown the world the drug that is 100 per cent cure for all coronavirus patients! They should show the world the drug in which any coronavirus patient that takes it will never die!

 

In places where malaria is a problem, people often take the drugs without any serious side effects, says Ira Baeringer, chief

operations officer of Rising Pharmaceuticals, a company based in East Brunswick, N.J. that donated hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for several large clinical trials. So far, studies looking at hydroxychloroquine use before or early in

infection haven’t produced any of the heart rhythm problems seen in studies of seriously ill patients. “When used alone, we’re not seeing major issues,” says Sarah Lofgren, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, where researchers are testing hydroxychloroquine’s ability to prevent COVID-19. “Out of our thousands of patients, we’re not seeing things people are quite concerned about, particularly the heart arrhythmias.”

 

Despite the controversy over the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, one thing is for sure, no one should take the drug or any other drug for that matter without the approval of qualified medical doctor licensed to practice in a given state

or country!