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Comment by ehayes | Hacker News Reader

> I have no interest in goalpost-moving efforts to say that they didn’t administer zinc or azithromycin

Don't really have a dog in this fight, but my understanding is that pro HCQ doctors believe that zinc must be included with HCQ --it's not "moving the goal posts" if doctors aren't arguing that HCQ alone is a cure. However it does sound like moving the goal posts if it HCQ is bad because it is not alone a cure.

In a study of 932 patient cases, researchers at New York University Langone Health found that the addition of zinc to hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin was associated with a decrease in mortality in patients who were not admitted to the intensive care unit. [1]

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v...

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Came here to say this. HCQ is the buzzword we use to refer to the treatment, but it's the combination HCQ with zinc or azithromycin that is actually thought to be useful.

This sounds like the pharmacology version of "you're not holding it right". Supposedly HCQ works because it is a Zinc Ionophore, facilitating intracellular zinc ion transport. Therefore you need zinc ions to transport. But zinc ions exist in the blood of humans. But some humans might be zinc deficient. But you can draw blood and measure their zinc ion concentration and then provide supplemental zinc. So to end up having done a whole study on HCQ efficacy but NOT covered the bases on "zinc needed" seems unbelievable.

> So to end up having done a whole study on HCQ efficacy but NOT covered the bases on "zinc needed" seems unbelievable.

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you critiquing the study for not measuring and supplementing zinc in the HCQ cohort?

They are saying that, even if HCQ+zinc is more right, HCQ alone should be an effective treatment (just less effective).

Is there a study of just zinc and/or azithromycin? I wonder if that alone would be associated with decreased mortality

There are studies with azithromycin that show no benefit. As far as I’m aware no published RCTs with HCQ + zinc.

But there was further research showing HCQ mechanism doesn’t actually do anything so HCQ studies lost steam because they were a waste of time and effort.

> Don't really have a dog in this fight, but my understanding is that pro HCQ doctors believe that zinc must be included with HCQ

Well, they do now, but that only seemed to emerge after it became clear that Raoult's (zinc-free) protocol didn't work.

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