An-Najah News - FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved the use of drugs touted by President Trump as a “game changer” for COVID-19, the two antimalarial drugs, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, for emergency use to treat COVID-19. 

According to the French Medical Journal, there is new evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not appear to help the immune system clear the coronavirus from the body. The study comes on the heels of two others - one in France and one in China - that reported some benefits in the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for COVID-19 patients who didn’t have severe symptoms of the virus.

In addition, pneumonia symptoms improved in 25 of the 31 patients versus 17 of 31 in the control group. The paper also appears to focus more on pneumonia than COVID-19. However, these issues may be cleared up or addressed once the paper completes the peer-review process.

Thus, despite the recent approval of this drug for use against COVID-19, questions remain as to the efficacy of this treatment. As Molina and colleagues note: “Ongoing randomized clinical trials with hydroxychloroquine should provide a definitive answer regarding the alleged efficacy of this combination and will assess its safety.”