Published in JAMA, but stopped early, also without zinc. It was, however, one of the very few randomised, double blind studies that I’m aware of.
So far I’m unaware of a single randomised controlled trial showing a positive result for HCQ - @Evvy_dense, did I miss some?
The story still isn’t clear in my opinion. Although if I got the disease I would try my best to convince the doc to give me hcq+zinc+azithro…
Hi PP.
Another study with ‘not found’ built in to the design…
The study is here
The authors say the study “may have been underpowered to detect a clinically important difference”.
That’s an understatement. The study group was only big enough to produce 8 Sars2 cases. Roughly speaking, in order to produce a statistically significant result (5% significance level) from these 8, they would need to have been split 7-1. Even if there is a true, say, 50% benefit from HCQ it would need considerable luck to get a positive result. The 5% significance level is a high bar to meet and small samples in addition ensure it is not met.
And as the study says, it stopped early - in fact there were two further infections but it’s not specified which branch they were in.
Basically it means this wasn’t really a study as the outcome was practically predetermined by the tiny sample (unless they expected there to be vastly more cases). A randomized controlled…nothing.
.
Nice comment. I wonder what on earth JAMA is thinking publishing this…? To my other question, are you aware of a randomised control trial with placebo for HCQ as a treatment which shows a positive result?
Cheers
“To my other question, are you aware of a randomised control trial with placebo for HCQ as a treatment which shows a positive result?”
There have been some, just looking on the useful HCQ collecion on https://c19study.com/ …
There’s a recent meta-anelysis of five RCT’s by Ladapo et el
The included studies were of early treatment. Notice that although they all observed some HCQ benefit none of them individually reached statistical significance. (No wonder there have been calls to abandon this much abused ‘yardstick’). But in the meta-analysis statistical significance was reached, due to the added statistical power of bigger samples
One of the included studies is Boulware; this study ignored the early treatment aspect, lumping all the treatments together, which was the main reason it didn’t report a strong positive result (though it also stopped early, which reduced the numbers further and weakened the statistical power of the study). When the data were re-analysed taking the time to treatment into account (Watanabe, can be found on the C19study link) a strong and statistically significant result was found for HCQ.
I think the meta-analysis used the re-analysis of Boulware - rightly so IMO…
The key insight for lay people to grasp onto strongly is that the HCQ cocktail is indeed highly effective, both as prophylactic and as treatment - early! - of the active disease. Though even HCQ+ is probably not quite as potent as a regular 2 - 3 grams per day of vitamin C as prophylactic, and something in the range of 30 - 50 grams - sic! - per day, preferably intravenously, for actual treatment of visible sickness. That - and the appropriate daily practical shamanic work - is what’s allowed me to sail serenely through this whole idiotic panic untroubled by either TDS* or covid. Don’t be sheep-herded by the Permanent Bullshit Blizzard; take charge of your own fate, FFS!
This other excellent approach - the big C - has been deliberately memory-holed even more completely than HCQ+, entirely, we’re forced to conclude, for political/commercial reasons. A major crime by the powers that shouldn’t be, in its own right, probably responsible for multiple avoidable deaths.
This whole ‘pandemic’ schtick has been marked by a near complete rubbishing of the traditional main vector of medical work for - well, forever, really: the sympathetic, face-to-face consultation of patients with competent, time-served medics, who try to suss out, using BOTH scientific, evidence-based reason AND the traditional, essentially shamanic faculty of intuition, a picture of what’s happening to the patient, and what might work if given a try; followed, of course, by carefully-watched trial and error to see what works. This old, old approach has already produced a conclusive demonstration in multiple clinical settings of the huge efficacy of both HCQ+ and of big-C. These are - excuse my forthrightness here - already well-established facts!
This main track of traditional medical practice - as used since time out of mind at the actual sharp end - has been virtually dumped in the current WHO-pushed, shyster-manipulated shitshow in favour of ersatz ‘scientific’ - read scientismic - frauds which better grind the axes of the disorderly mob (certainly no tightly-organised grand conspiracy here!) of disparate criminal shysters who have leapt opportunistically aboard the bandwaggon to make amoral capital out of the mess: the Bellender Gatesoids, as you might characterise them, if you want an adequately-ribald name-tag.
As Vernon Coleman fulminates in his latest vid - at ‘Brand New Tube’! - a whole lot of pols, hacks, fancy-career-medics and fancy-career tenured-ivories should be prosecuted and jailed for all this wilful, corruption-driven deceit. I’m with Vernon there, though not with his assertion that this thoroughly-deserved retribution is about to happen. No, V, not a chance! Maybe after a big revolution, but quite possibly lost in the chaos even then.
** Including self-deceit, of course: “…difficult to get a man to see something when his salary [and fancy career] depends on him not seeing…”
You hardly have to ask “what is JAMA thinking” - because it’s thinking “what else can we do to stop people believing that HCQ treatment works?”
I cannot believe that this campaign against the only really effective drug treatment is still persisting, while the nonsense about it not working is still repeated automatically whenever a new story appears that might give it oxygen. So to speak.
The problem of finding a “good” RCT is that this is not particularly appropriate for HCQ treatment. It was the basis for attacking Raoult’s first and definitive trial, which although small was statisically highly significant. Because of the nature of the trial, and daily testing of viral load in those treated, having a “placebo” treatment was unnecessary and irrelevant. The “placebo” treatment was given to all the patients around France who got no HCQ, and no-one needed not to know who they were as it was obvious - they were the ones with symptoms and illness!
The inauthenticity and intent to mislead of every anti-HCQ trial - and they all are - is proven by their failure to show any benefit from a drug which no independent observer could claim is ineffective.
There is one trial that was more or less RCT, which was the retrospective survey of 200 odd health workers in India, half of whom had taken HCQ as prophylactic; I quoted it at the start of an article, aimed at the Australian study on prophylaxis started in june, and which should have had a result by now. When it started it was like the one quoted here, as there was little chance of anyone involved getting the virus. But then we had the “second wave” and about 3000 healthcare workers infected. The trial had a mention yesterday, but no observation that the results should be found NOW. When the virus is extinct they will announce that "it appears that HCQ had a beneficial effect, so if it weren’t for the trial, more healthcare workers would have been infected.
Now I find Trump has been given Remdesevir!!! Do they want to kill him? Why the F**K didn’t he take HCQ and AZM, as he’s been recommending? He really is manipulated, by that bastard Fauci.
I’ve just looked at this study, and it really takes the cake! Even as it admits that the study was discontinued due to “Futility” factor - as not enough participants got CV19 to draw any statistically valid conclusions, the thing was still published, so it can be cited by people who never examined the details, or simply looked at all the detailed dissection of disease profiles and the like. The comparison with Raoult’s 1st trial is stark.