CIA warned employees not to use unproven drug

[struggle4progress]

MATTHEW ROZSA

APRIL 14, 2020 11:50PM (UTC)

The Central Intelligence Agency warned its employees not to use an unproven drug treatment for the new coronavirus touted by President Donald Trump, because it could result in "sudden cardiac death."

"At this point, the drug is not recommended to be used by patients, except by medical professionals prescribing it as part of ongoing investigational studies," the CIA wrote on an internal website for employees on March 27 in response to media reports about hydroxychloroquine. "There are potentially significant side effects, including sudden cardiac death, associated with hydroxychloroquine, and its individual use in patients need to be carefully selected and monitored by a health care professional" ...

https://www.salon.com/2020/04/14/cia-warned-employees-not-to-use-unproven-drug-treatment-for-coronavirus-touted-by-president-trump/

[struggle4progress]

1. Hydroxychloroquine and you

APRIL 14, 2020
TONY PIERCE

... The hydroxychloroquine buzz began after results from a small French study of 20 patients was released, not in a science journal, but on YouTube ...

Critics also note the small size of the study and the lack of a double blind test. They also question why Raoult has yet to publish the raw data from the trial ...

https://losangeleno.com/people/raj-batra/

[SunSeeker]

8. The French ended a hydroxychloroquine trial after bad cardiac effects.

https://www.newsweek.com/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-france-heart-cardiac-1496810


Brazil stopped their trial too for the same reasons.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/health/chloroquine-coronavirus-trump.html

[struggle4progress]

2. FAA tells pilots not to fly if they take the controversial malaria pill

David Slotnick

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will bar pilots from flying if they have taken the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine within the past 48 hours ...

"As with all drugs, the FAA takes a conservative approach when evaluating how a particular substance interacts with aviation professionals and the ability to do their jobs safely," the spokesperson said. "Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were both reviewed by the FAA Federal Air Surgeon when they entered the market and have long been considered generally incompatible for those performing safety related aviation duties" ...

"Due to the wide variety of dosages and lack of standardized protocols for treating COVID-19, pilots using these medications are disqualified from performing safety related duties until 48 hours after they have stopped using them" ...

... the original FAA guidance said that there is "no satisfactory scientific evidence that use of these medications decreases the severity of the virus" ...

https://www.businessinsider.com/faa-ban-pilots-hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-2020-4

[struggle4progress]

3. Chloroquine study halted after deaths of high dose patients

By Alan Lyndon

A new study found that chloroquine should not be used in higher dosages to treat COVID-19 due to potential harm to patients, specifically fatal heart arrhythmia.

Chloroquine (CQ) and the related drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) are antimalarial drugs ...

The Brazilian study followed 81 COVID-19 positive patients and sought to compare two dosages of chloroquine — high dose CQ (600mg CQ twice daily for 10 days) or low dose CQ (450mg for 5 days, twice daily only on the first day).

After six days of treatment, 11 of the patients in the high dose regimen had died which led to the “immediate interruption of the high dose arm,” according to the authors, and all remaining patients were moved to the low dosage. Only two of the 11 deaths were over 75 years old ...

https://physiciansnews.com/2020/04/14/covid-19-chloroquine-study-halted-after-deaths-of-high-dose-patients/

[struggle4progress]

4. No evidence yet for effective treatments

Dr. Tiffany Kung
April 14, 2020, 8:02 PM

... The review, published in JAMA on April 13, 2020, summarizes what's currently known about medical therapies used to treat COVID-19, concluding that "no therapies have been shown effective to date."

Researchers at the University of Texas analyzed evidence on major proposed COVID-19 treatments published by the end of March 2019 and written in English. They found no strong evidence that any potential COVID-19 therapy is effective ...

"The article is a refreshing reminder that no therapy is yet proven to work, including drugs like chloroquine that we have heard so much about," said Dr. Kathryn Stephenson, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research Clinical Trials Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston ...

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-19-treatments-effective-review-shows/story?id=70140442

[struggle4progress]

5. Drug Evaluation during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Benjamin N. Rome, M.D., and Jerry Avorn, M.D.

... These developments represent fundamental threats to the U.S. drug-evaluation process. Advocating that the FDA should quickly approve drugs without randomized trial data runs counter to the idea of evidence-based medicine and risks further undermining the public’s understanding of and faith in the drug-review process, which requires “substantial evidence” of safety and efficacy based on adequate and well-controlled trials before a drug can be marketed. Though this unprecedented emergency provides a compelling reason for the FDA to act as efficiently as possible, the agency and the medical community can still maintain the highest scientific standards while acting expeditiously.

The new EUA represents only the second time the FDA has ever used emergency authority to permit use of a medication for an unapproved indication. During the 2009–2010 “swine flu” outbreak, the agency allowed use of peramivir — an investigational intravenous neuraminidase inhibitor — in severely ill hospitalized patients with H1N1 influenza. Under that EUA, peramivir was administered to some 1200 to 1500 patients, with no rigorous tracking of which patients received it or collection of outcome data.2 Ultimately, a randomized, controlled trial failed to show any benefit of peramivir as compared with placebo in severely ill hospitalized patients with influenza; the drug was approved in 2014 with an indication only for uncomplicated influenza and not for use in severely ill hospitalized patients ...

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2009457

[struggle4progress]

6. Not So Fast: Hydroxychloroquine Is Unproven

By AVERY KLEINMAN • 7 HOURS AGO

... The Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drug’s use to treat coronavirus. There are inherent dangers to promoting an unproven drug. And the medication is a legitimate treatment for other potentially-fatal diseases like Lupus, and drug shortages are occurring as people scramble to get hold of it. And some coronavirus patients could die of harmful side effects ...

https://www.wvpublic.org/post/not-so-fast-hydroxychloroquine-unproven-covid-19-cure#stream/0

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7. Lupus patients concerned over access to hydroxychloroquine

By Carley Bonk Chambersburg Public Opinion 11 hrs ago

... The drug, also known as “Plaquenil,” has been a hot topic in the media, amongst doctors, scientists and political figures in the past few weeks. Some — such as President Trump — tout the medication as a "game-changer," but the medical community isn't so sure.

Clinical trials can often take years of testing and research to determine the effectiveness of certain medications. Testing of hydroxychloroquine has popped up across the globe as an option to treat patients suffering from COVID-19, but the concrete results of its effectiveness have not yet been determined.

Even so, pharmacists have already started to notice restrictions within the supply chain for patients who rely on the drug — many of whom have been diagnosed with the autoimmune disease Lupus ...

https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/special/coronavirus/lupus-patients-concerned-over-access-to-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-treatment-uncertain/article_83a691ba-18bc-5dfc-a448-28c4c6e252cc.html

[tanyev]

9. I'm suspicious of this story that appeared on a local news station.

61 year old woman who is a radio host for a Christian station got Covid 19, doctor prescribed hydroxychloroquine, she remembered that she just happened to have some at home, took it and got better in one day. Hmph.

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/i-was-so-much-better-in-one-day-says-suspected-and-hospitalized-covid-19-patient-who-recovered-with-hydroxychloroquine/287-710f175e-7f61-4d99-9681-c878bf773749

[struggle4progress]

12. WFAA is in DFW, right? The city has a big, well-organized wingnut population,

who can push their ideology

[tanyev]

14. Yep, and this same woman was featured in a story March 20 about not being able to get a test.

I don't doubt that she was really sick, but there seems to be quite a bit of "Alert the media!" going on.


https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/young-patients-complain-about-difficulty-getting-tested-even-with-all-the-symptoms-of-covid-19/287-459b9ab1-3639-49ba-8da4-b0c4ea0bd70e

[struggle4progress]

10. False hope and the consequences

Elyse Samuels and Meg Kelly
April 13, 2020 at 3:00 a.m. EDT

... Renée DiResta, technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, found similar trends on Facebook and Instagram in February. The number of total posts and interactions increased, and Internet speculation spread beyond China to Nigeria, Vietnam and France.

A large portion of activity online at the end of February and early March appeared in French and centered on a study published by French researcher and doctor Didier Raoult ...

... the hypothesis spread widely on U.S. social media. The Fact Checker has refrained from linking to original posts on the drugs to avoid giving further oxygen to misleading information.

According to Starbird, the first viral tweets were posted by Paul Sperry, a staunchly conservative author, on March 9 and 11. A blockchain investor, James Todaro, then tweeted a link to a Google document he co-wrote with Gregory Rigano about the potential cure on March 13. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk retweeted that Google doc on March 16, writing, “Maybe worth considering chloroquine for C19.” The faulty research then appeared in the Gateway Pundit, Breitbart and the Blaze. It ultimately made its way to Fox News, first appearing on Laura Ingraham’s program on March 16. Fox News shows hosted by Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson went on to promote the drugs and continue to do so ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/13/how-false-hope-spread-about-hydroxychloroquine-its-consequences/

[Initech]

11. Holy shit, the cure really is worse than the disease.