2024-09-09 16:00:00
How many Covid-19 patients have died from hydroxychloroquine treatment? A French study, which proposed an estimate among hospital patients during the first wave of the pandemic, was withdrawn on August 26 by the newspaper Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy. This editorial decision pleased those who defended the “Raoult method”, while it worried some pharmacists and epidemiologists, according to whom this decision was not justified.
Jean-Christophe Lega is, however, careful not to hide anything from the uncertainties surrounding the results of the study he has led, published at the beginning of 2024. With his colleagues, this doctor and epidemiologist from The University of Lyon-I has arrived at a figure of 17,000 deaths in six countries – including 199 for France – but he admits that the wide confidence interval means that the truth could be between 3,000 and 30,000 deaths.
It is also noted that the poor quality of many databases does not make it possible to make these calculations for countries that have taken the drug hydroxychloroquine widely, such as Brazil or India, so the deaths linked know this treatment has to be abundant. Not to mention prescriptions outside of a hospital setting.
Remember that no significant research has been able to provide evidence of the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) against Covid-19 – the opposite has been shown. This molecule promoted by Didier Raoult in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin can have serious cardiac toxicity: the first deaths recorded at the beginning of 2020 by pharmaceutical networks have also led the director of the IHU Méditerranée to remove some patients from the book This prescription is dangerous. .
Important letters
The objective of Jean-Christophe Lega is therefore to estimate the number of patients who have been treated with the molecule and, based on the mortality rate provided by a British study (Axfors et al., Nature communicationsThe year 2021), to estimate the number of those who would have submitted to treatment. This strategy was immediately hit on social networks.
“I quickly received many fairly complex emails, often polite, sometimes not, calling into question the truth of our results”said the epidemic. His university principal, too, was struck by criticism. There are arguments put forward by the statistician Vincent Pavan, president of the Réinfo Liberté group, or disseminated by the friendly sites of the “raoultosphere”, France-Soir and Bonsens.info, the latter announces that he has paid attention to the newspaperby a lawyer, to respond to his criticisms.
#Controversy #deaths #linked #hydroxychloroquine #returns