I read the main paper from France that started the craze over hydroxychloroquine, and there are some things you should know. Here’s the paper if you’d like to read along: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300996#bib0012

1. Sample size was small – 26 received hydroxychlorine (hxc) and 16 were in the control group, who did not get hxc. The groups were not randomized, and were not blind. Everyone knew who was getting what.

2. If anyone was moved to the ICU they were REMOVED FROM THE STUDY. This is because the test they were doing was nasal swabs to see how much virus was in the patient (viral load). They couldn’t swab patients in the ICU.

3. Four people in the treatment group were moved to ICU, and one died. Those are not included in the 26. Zero people in the control group had to go to the ICU. Again – 4 out of 30 receiving hxc had to go to the ICU and one died. 0 out of 16 had to go to the ICU, and zero died.

4. The ‘positive’ result of the study is that patients getting hxc had lower ‘viral loads’ and the virus was cleared from their bodies faster. It had nothing to do (as noted) with final outcomes. However, there are some issues with even this minor finding:

5. The Control group was not chosen at random. It was made up of people who were excluded from the study because they either didn’t want to enroll, or had a condition that said they shouldn’t have it (retinopathy, G6PD deficiency and QT prolongation, allergies).

There was no attempt to see if those exclusions made people more prone to higher viral load.

6. Average age of the control group was 37. Average age of the treatment group was 51. That’s a really big age discrepancy, and no analysis of how age affects viral load was done.

7. Some of the patients received azithromycin (a strong antibiotic), as needed by their symptoms. Those receiving azithromycin had lower viral loads, but the introduction splinters the already small groups into even smaller subgroups, reducing statistical significance.

8. So it is worth studying more? Maybe. But this study hardly positions hxc as a ‘miracle cure’. More than 10% of the people who started on it ended up in the ICU, and one died. Zero people died who weren’t taking it. The methodology here is way too thin to use for any treatment.

9. The paper states that 100% of the patients had reduced viral load - which is true, and what many have been touting. But keep in mind that it excludes people that got sicker, and that there are many other complicating factors.

NOTE: This is not a knock on the researchers. They included all the relevant information in their study. I'm not sure if they personally hyped the results, but I give them the benefit of the doubt. The media and administrators tend to distort results for headlines.