Clinical Outcomes of Hydroxychloroquine in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19


June 8, 2020

In a retrospective study of hospitalized patients with COVID-19, by Joshua Barbosa et al, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, it shows that Hydroxychloroquine does not seem to have meaningful benefits on clinical outcome measures of mortality, lymphopenia, or neutrophil-to lymphocyte ratio improvement. The authors demonstrate that patients receiving Hydroxychloroquine appeared to have a worse clinical outcome in terms of requirement for escalation of respiratory support even when confounders were controlled for. The authors recommend more cautious prescription of Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 until more data from a larger studies and analysis are coming.