Hydroxychloroquine is toast. Say hello to that “dirty” cousin now

In the beginning of June, when tenOever and his co-workers first drugged a hamster in his lab, it provided considerable protection against the virus that causes Covid-19. “We were, uh, it was weird. Let’s do it again,” says tenOever. They kept repeating it and saw good results. A team of researchers, including Donald Ingber from the Wyss Institute in Boston, then showed that it reduced levels of harmless viruses designed to carry the drug in human lung cells. Spike protein As a pandemic. “It works beautifully,” says tenOever.

Others are not convinced by the results. “The surrogate viruses are not the same,” says Vincent Lacaniello, a microbiologist at Columbia University in New York. Racaniello pointed out the design limitations of such a study and now states that there is insufficient evidence to warrant testing amodiaquin in humans.

Especially when performed by other researchers hamster And Human lung cells Tests with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine were empty. Just in case, tenOever and his collaborators directly compared hamster amodiaquine and hydroxychloroquine with a common control group. Amodiaquin reduced the amount of viral material. I didn’t do hydroxychloroquine. (No difference in live virus was measured in this experiment.)

Sunil Parikh, a malaria researcher at Yale University School of Public Health and another group conducting lab tests for Amodiaquin on Covid-19, said all new study hamsters were exposed one day before being exposed to the pandemic. The virus is said to have been given medicine. As a result, there is no way to know what will happen when the drug is given to an already sick animal. “The results of the hamster model are impressive in demonstrating the potential for preventive action, but they don’t help show potential for treatment,” says Parikh.

The results of the new study are intriguing to Isaac Bogotch, a clinical researcher at the Toronto General Hospital Institute specializing in infectious diseases. “I think it’s completely interesting,” he says. “But if you store amodiaquine as a result of this, self-treat this, and claim that the doctor has found a cure, then it’s a mistake, it’s the wrong answer, and we already went there I am doing.”

The hydroxychloroquine debacle highlights the serious risks of drug overuse in the absence of clinical trial data. Not only for those who may receive a useless drug with potential side effects, but also for those who need the drug for other reasons. As the US government bought How many hydroxychloroquine stores and their prescriptions for use in pandemics Through the roof As rumors spread about its potential use in pandemics, the number of patients who had been dependent on it for years to treat diseases like lupus began to run short. (This spring, 1 in 3 lupus patients They said Hard to get medicine.. The same stockpiling behavior can be even more disastrous with Amodiaquine. It is used for the second most common combination treatment for malaria. Malaria is a disease that kills nearly half a million people each year, most of it African children under 5..

“If you have an amodiaquine situation, such as a stockpile of hydroxychloroquine, receiving the necessary treatment for malaria can have a major impact on the country and can significantly increase the mortality rate due to malaria.” World Health Organization Global Malaria Program Officer. In countries such as Nigeria and Chad, amodiaquine is also given to healthy children to prevent malaria transmission during the rainy season. In these situations, the drug is usually given for 3 days a month. Last year, 20 million children received the drug.

Another problem is the fact that amodiaquins are not currently available in the United States. A 1980s study documented liver damage in chronic users for malaria prevention. There were also signs that high dose accumulation could cause abnormal heart rhythms. Parikh says complicating the potential use of amodiaquine as a prophylactic against Covid-19. “Preventive trials are very difficult, and when amodiaquine was used as a preventative drug for western travelers, it was pulled due to toxicity,” he says.