Impressive results across a decent cohort.
The only thing missing is a control group. Why no control group?
The average time in Intensive care was almost a normal turnover, which would improve the needs for vents and ICU beds.
Here is a link to a real time summation of results for patients reported by IHU in France. You can see the difference in fatalities between the overall COVID-19 patient set and the treated set.
Because you have to not treat and thus kill people in the control group? Just a shot in the dark.
Possibly because people who are in imminent fear of death aren’t keen on the possibility of receiving a placebo.
Would you want your loved one in the control group on this?
Don’t know if you can answer this, but there seem to be two forms of the “chloroquine” out there. The “Plaquenil” used in this study, and a whole boxcar full of “chloroquine phosphate” tablets from Bayer.
Is there a difference?
I would think both forms would have to be utilized to meet demand.
Their “control group” seemed to be other studies or theoretical considerations...not the best to be sure...a couple or more of these types of studies may indicate that the meds may be very useful. I hope larger cohorts and multiarmed treatment protocols and even an untreated group (IIRC, if treatment seems to help overwhelmingly with no severe toxicities...non treatment arms may be discontinued) can be done and results reported as soon as possible. So far...looking promising. More studies please. FAST.
For those who they consider desperate enough to try it on, being in a control group might have been a death sentence...
“Impressive results across a decent cohort.
The only thing missing is a control group. Why no control group?”
I think the control group in effect was the study in Hong Kong-
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1473-3099%2820%2930196-1
The Hong Kong study is cited as reference number 22 in the Raoult et. al. paper.
The Hong Kong study found detectable viral load for 20 days on average in patients not receiving Choroquine/azithromycin.
It also found that there was no correlation between the severity of the symptoms and the length of time for which patients had detectable viral load. So the shorter time to elimination of detectable viral infection in the Raoult et. al. study is not due to its patients having less or more severe cases of the infection. There are other benefits to having a new control group studied but in this case there was a pretty good control group identified. A better study would be double blind (use of placebos for the control group, patients/doctors don’t know who is getting a placebo and who isn’t), I would think that is the next step.
https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/COVID-IHU-2-1.pdf
You dont want to kill your control group by giving them placebo. Doctors already know quite well what happens to people who get no treatment.