Hydroxychloroquine does not reduce deaths from COVID‐19 (search up to 15 September 2020)
Citation: Singh B, Ryan H, Kredo T, et al. Chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for prevention and treatment of COVID‐19. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2021;(2):CD013587.
What is this? Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have been suggested as drugs to prevent or treat COVID‐19.
In this Cochrane review, the authors searched for randomized trials testing chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients, people at risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 or people exposed to SARS-CoV-2. They did not restrict their searches by type or language of publication and did the search up to 15 September 2020. They included 12 trials (8569 participants) of the treatment of COVID-19 and 2 trials (3346 participants) for preventing COVID‐19 disease in people who have been exposed to SARS‐CoV‐2. They found no trials of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for preventing COVID‐19 disease in people at risk of exposure to SARS‐CoV‐2. They identified 122 ongoing trials for treatment or prevention of COVID‐19 and present a summary of 22 ongoing treatment trials and 15 ongoing prevention trials that were reported to be recruiting actively or that had completed recruitment but were yet to publish and had a target recruitment of ≥500 participants.
What works: Nothing noted.
What doesn’t work:
Hydroxychloroquine does not affect how many COVID-19 patients will die, compared with usual care or placebo (9 studies, 8208 patients).
Chloroquine made little or no difference to the time taken for symptoms to improve in COVID-19 patients compared with lopinavir plus ritonavir (1 trial, 22 patients).
Hydroxychloroquine made no difference to how many COVID-19 patients were admitted to hospital compared to febuxostat (1 trial, 60 people).
Hydroxychloroquine added to azithromycin made no difference to how many COVID-19 patients died (1 trial, 444 people).
What’s uncertain: Whether hydroxychloroquine affects how many people exposed to SARS-CoV-2 develop COVID‐19, or how many people are admitted to hospital with COVID‐19 is uncertain (2 trials, 3346 people).