Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
It's important to interpret these results carefully: "no evidence of efficacy" does <i>not</i> imply evidence of no efficacy, and in fact the uncertainty in this study is quite large. The sample size is small enough that it would be very hard for this study to detect the effect of hydroxychloroquine unless that effect is very, very large.<p>From the abstract:<p>> In the HCQ group, 2.8% of the patients died within 7 days vs 4.6% in the no-HCQ group (3 vs 4 events, RR 0.61, 95% CI 0.13-2.89), and 27.4% and 24.1%, respectively, developed acute respiratory distress syndrome within 7 days (24 vs 23 events, RR 1.14, 95% CI 0.65-2.00).<p>The relative risks and confidence intervals are the important numbers here. For example, the relative risk for death is 0.61, meaning the observed risk of death was lower for patients treated with hydroxychloroquine -- but the confidence interval is 0.13 to 2.89, meaning the data is consistent with anything from the risk being much smaller to the risk being much <i>larger</i>. Since there were only 3 deaths in the treatment group and 4 deaths in the control group, it's very hard to draw precise conclusions about death rates.<p>I think we can interpret this result to mean that hydroxychloroquine doesn't have a miraculously large effect, but the evidence is weak. Other commenters are correct that large randomized trials will be more definitive.<p>(disclaimer: I am a statistician, not a doctor)