A robust scientific study highlights the excess mortality of Covid-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine.
Presented by some doctors as a miracle cure against Covid-19 at the start of the pandemic in 2020, hydroxychloroquine very quickly proved to be ineffective and even dangerous. A danger explained by many doctors from the start of the pandemic in several global studies. This drug is actually used in the treatment of malaria and its use against Covid 19 has never been approved by health authorities. Professor Didier Raoult, working in Marseille, was notably one of the defenders of hydroxychloroquine.
A new study, published this Tuesday, January 2 in the journalBiomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, reveals that hydroxychloroquine would be responsible for nearly 17,000 deaths in a total of six countries including France, in the first phase of the pandemic between March and July 2020. Carried out by researchers from Lyon University Hospital, the study estimates that nearly 13,000 deaths have occurred in the United States and 200 in France following the use of hydroxychloroquine. However, as indicated France Inter, these figures could be underestimated. This study does not take into account countries like India or Brazil where the drug has been widely prescribed but whose figures are not accessible.
Another limitation of the study highlighted by France Inter is that it only focuses on a specific period of the Covid-19 epidemic, not taking into account the following months during which hydroxychloroquine was also used. The study specifies that the rate of prescription of the drug was relatively low in France with a rate of 16% due to a fairly rapid restriction after a peak in prescription between mid-March and mid-April 202. This rate reached levels higher in the other countries covered by the study.
To carry out this study, scientists first analyzed the excess mortality of patients treated with hydroxychloroquine. They therefore looked at only six countries: France, the United States, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Turkey. They observed different data such as the number of patients hospitalized due to Covid, their mortality rate and the prescription rate of hydroxychloroquine. After determining the number of Covid patients treated with the drug who died, they then applied the excess mortality rate in these patients and came to a conclusion of around 17,000 deaths.
Invited to the France Inter microphone this Wednesday, January 3, epidemiologist Pierre Tatevin, head of the infectious diseases department at Rennes University Hospital, highlighted the danger posed by hydroxychloroquine. “This confirms that patients suffering from Covid and who receive this drug are more likely to die than those who do not receive it.” He also recalled that “giving unnecessary and potentially toxic treatment to already fragile patients is something dangerous.”
At LCI this Thursday, January 4, Mathieu Molimard, head of the pharmacology department at Bordeaux University Hospital, recalled that the pharmacology community rejected the use of the drug in the treatment of Covid-19 from the start of the pandemic. He also stressed that this study only provides an estimate and that the published figure could be much higher by taking into account other countries and studying the use of hydroxychloroquine over a longer period.