RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A study conducted by Prevent Senior, a health care provider, assesses the use of Hydroxychloroquine at an early stage in patients suspected of having contracted the novel coronavirus.
According to the study, the use of the drug in the initial stage of the disease, when the patient presents only common flu symptoms, has a major impact in relieving hospitals in a pandemic scenario. The research awaits publication in the medical journal PLOS Medicine.
The company states that early stage treatment of the disease, associated with social isolation of its beneficiaries, led to a drop of 80 percent in the rates in emergency room facilities. Currently, only 60 percent of its beds allocated for the treatment of Covid-19 are occupied. Thus far, 380 coronavirus patients have been discharged from Prevent Senior hospitals.
The number of deaths from Covid-19 has dropped 60 percent and the average age of patients dying has risen from 80 to 83, according to Pedro Batista Júnior, Prevent Senior’s physician and executive director. The reduction in deaths is not recorded in the current study and should be included in a later publication.
The study referred to PLOS Medicine was conducted on 636 patients, 412 of whom received Hydroxychloroquine associated with Azithromycin in the first days of symptoms. The other 224 patients did not take it and worked as a control group. The company, which mainly serves the elderly, claims that the protocol prevented one hospitalization for every 28 patients who initiated treatment.
“In the context of a Covid-19 pandemic, preventing a single hospitalization for each group of 28 patients may mean, demographically speaking, the difference between overwhelming or not the capacity of health care services,” says the company. “It is a study that lays the responsibility of clinical evaluation and follow-up on doctors,” Batista Júnior says.
Among patients who received the drug at an early stage, only 1.9 percent required hospitalization. Among the 224 patients in the control group, 5.4 percent required hospitalization. “Those who didn’t take the medication needed hospitalization 2.84 times more,” Júnior says.
According to Batista Júnior, the use of Hydroxychloroquine in the early stage of the disease should be considered in a specific pandemic context in which testing for Covid-19 takes seven to ten days to be ready. The doctor says that, even in the absence of a confirmed test for the disease, tomography can help in deciding on the use of the drug.
“We were able to map the course of the disease in three parts. The first, only with symptoms. The second with symptoms and inflammation. The third with severe inflammation. And we’ve identified that the best use of the drug is in the initial period. The golden day is the second day of symptoms. Knowing this, we chose to start with medication in the early stages, even without the test confirmation,” he explains.
The company maintains three hospitals exclusively designed to treat patients with coronavirus. A fourth unit was being prepared to attend more patients, but the company says that with the stabilization of the number of hospitalizations, it will not be required.
Batista Junior says that, unlike Chloroquine, Hydroxychloroquine has a low toxicity. The main risk associated with the use of the drug is the occurrence of arrhythmia, which may occur in one in every thousand cases. Some type of allergy to the drug may also occur. The drug is used to treat arthritis and lupus. “If there is medical follow-up, the risk is reduced and controlled,” he says.
The company is conducting another study, with patients using this drug for other health conditions in order to understand what coronavirus contamination is like in this public. In another study, with patients in a critical condition, the company says it was able to reduce the length of stay in intensive care units from 14 to 8 days.
Source: Exame