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Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and other regimens in Marseille, France: A retrospective analysis
Indeed, among the candidate treatments, only three main drugs (remdesivir, lopinavir-ritonavir and HCQ) have been tested in large comparative studies [[11], [12], [13]]. Lopinavir-ritonavir and remdesivir have not clearly demonstrated efficacy but are associated with many adverse events [11,12,14]. HCQ has demonstrated its efficacy in reducing viral shedding persistence [6] and improving clinical status in observational or randomized clinical trials [13,15,16]. In addition, we performed a recent meta-analysis of 20 available reports, including 105,040 patients demonstrating that, in clinical studies, chloroquine and its derivatives improve clinical and biological outcomes and reduce mortality by a factor 3 in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients [10]. In addition, we recently reported a very low mortality rate in a retrospective analysis of more than 1,000 patients early treated with a combination of HCQ-AZ, with a very low mild adverse event rate (2.3%) [8]. Conversely, in a recent observational study, patients treated with HCQ showed no difference regarding risk of death or intubation compared with patients under other treatments [17]. However, the patients included in the group receiving HCQ had more severe disease and had more comorbidities than those who did not receive the drug [17].
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