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Comment by aaavl2821 | Hacker News Reader

Fwiw, Plaquenil is hydroxychloroquine, a less toxic derivative of chloroquine. It has a different safety profile than chloroquine

The French study of HCQ had several limitations. Including that it was very small and some patients who got HCQ and progressed to go to the ICU were excluded from the study. Thus making the drug look better than it is

HCQ is not likely to be a miracle cure. It may be useful in combo with other drugs

It's easy to make not great data look like great data to untrained eyes. And it's tempting to cut scientific corners to bring forward a drug for covid-19. But if the drug doesn't work, we should be honest about that and look for better drugs

Should at risk people take HCQ as a precaution until something better comes along? Definitely. but we need to be careful in talking about its potential

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> It may be useful in combo with other drugs

Weren't the first studies done in combination with azithromycin (which is bizzare, as that's an antibiotic)?

The azithromycin was given to some of the patients with viral pneumonia as there is a chance of reinfection with bacterial pneumonia. Astonishing and unexpectedly, the covid19 virus was completely wiped out in all the HCQ+azithromycin patients but only in a bit over half the HCQ alone patients. So just as an antiparasite drug surprisingly once was found to also work as an antiviral, azithromycin has unexpectedly been found to have some sort of a complementary amplifying or catalyzing effect with the hydrochloroquine. Of unknown mechanism and no doubt this will be explored in great detail in future research. For now it's known that putting the two together looks to be a good thing to do.

the problem is quite simple: the virus infects your body, damages your lungs, and fucks up your immune system. Then you get an opportunistic pneumonia

The mechanism is also quite simple: administer them both together and the antimalarials kill the virus, the antibiotics kill the pneumonia.

you're not really an md, are you?

No. Now let's have a look at that bwain of yours.

It may be early to conclude that azithromycin has a complementary mechanism with HCQ, the study was too small and there are too many confounding factors. It is possible there is some synergy but also possible that there is not

Azithromycin has been shown to have some antiviral effect though it has not been characterized and the mechanism of action is unknown.

I assume they chose that as a broad spectrum prophylaxis for and opportunistic concurrent infection but perhaps they chose it specifically for this reason.

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