7 ms·

From Gregory Rigano: UPDATE: Full peer reviewed study has been released by Didier Raoult MD, PhD drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9…. After 6 days 100% of patie

From Gregory Rigano: UPDATE: Full peer reviewed study has been released by Didier Raoult MD, PhD drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9…. After 6 days 100% of patients treated with HCQ + Azithromycin were virologically cured p-value <.0001 covidtrial.io https://twitter.com/riganoesq/status/1240273631604809728?s=21 https://twitter.com/riganoesq/status/1240273631604809728?s=2...

troughway 7y ago
What does this mean for the build up of antibodies? Is reinfection likely to occur as a result of this?
war1025 7y ago
I really hope this turns out to be the magic bullet that saves us from this mess.
teddyvangogh 7y ago
looks promising. "A renowned research professor in France has reported successful results from a new treatment for Covid-19, with early tests suggesting it can stop the virus from being contagious in just six days. Professor Raoult is an infectious diseases specialist and head of the IHU Méditerranée Infection, who has been tasked by - and consulted by - the French government to research possible treatments of Covid-19." https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/French-researcher-in-Marseille-posts-successful-Covid-19-coronavirus-drug-trial-results https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/French-researche...
softwaredoug 7y ago
Is this something that be manufactured at scale to treat 1-4% of the world's population in the next few months?
- voidmain 7y ago
  I'm no industrial chemist, but from a glance at the chemical formula [1], I'm going to guess that it could be produced by the trainload (provided that you shoot the FDA first, which we should have done on the first day of the epidemic judging by their track record so far) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine
  - kortex 7y ago
    Former process chemist here. Yep, you could produce trainloads of this stuff within the month if you bypass the FDA, and even if you do play by the book, current capacity could easily crank out kilos of GMP HQ a day.
    - Engineering-MD 7y ago
      Could you expand a bit on the required base materials and possible bottlenecks? Would third world countries be able to produce this, and would export restrictions on reagents/chemicals limit production for some countries?
- gpm 7y ago
  There were 5.7 million american prescriptions for Hydroxychloroquine in 2017, and the wholesale price quoted on wikipedia is 5 dollars for a months worth of pills. I don't know how difficult scaling up production is, but the above numbers make me hopeful.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
How many of the control group were cured?
- war1025 7y ago
  A tweet I saw yesterday said 95% recovered on the medicine. 90% of the control group still contagious. Haven't looked up the post again, but it was something I found either on that same twitter feed or a source he was pulling from.
  - nostromo 7y ago
    Don’t 98%+ recover already?
    - war1025 7y ago
      I believe average hospital stay for those that need to be hospitalized can be upwards of 3 weeks though. So something that cuts it down to a week or avoids the need for the ICU bed altogether would be a game changer.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - joe_the_user 7y ago
      Wat? There are widespread report of lung damage for severe Covids patients who recover.
  - mrep 7y ago
    From the doc [0]: "At day6 post-inclusion, 100% of patients treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin combination were virologicaly cured comparing with 57.1% in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine only, and 12.5% in the control group (p<0.001)." [0]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9RqfsmEx55FDum4xY_IlWSHnGbj/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9RqfsmEx55FDum4xY_IlWS...
- 7y ago
smallgovt 7y ago
Given that markets didn't react to this news 11 hours ago, I think it's safe to say that this doesn't have significant prospects of being a real cure.
- war1025 7y ago
  The markets are reacting to the total shutdown of the service sector. That's going to cause a lot of pain whether or not this turns out to be the answer.
  - majos 7y ago
    If it turns out that there’s a cheap, widely available, already-studied treatment that achieves something even close to the 100% cure rate observed in the paper, the timeline for total shutdown looks much shorter, no?
    - war1025 7y ago
      > If it turns out That's the kicker. We are still waiting to see. One guy did it. Now others need to try it and see if it helps.
  - smallgovt 7y ago
    You don't think the markets would skyrocket if a real cure that is easily manufactured was discovered today? Sure, there's still a lot of pain to follow but the markets have priced in a lot of really bad scenarios where the virus kills large numbers and shutdowns last a long time.
koolba 7y ago
Isn’t Azithromycin antibiotics? (Z-pack?) How would that help vs a virus? Or does it just help the body from having other unrelated things to also fight?
- treis 7y ago
  It has a broad effect on the immune system and inflammation beyond it's anti-bacterial effects. Lots of changes to the production/expression of different factors and cell mechanisms. I don't think it's fully understood how it helps in situations like this but probably related to inflammation and reducing the cytokine storm.
  - koolba 7y ago
    Interesting. Is there any research on using it in isolation to treat this or other coronavirus? Or only in combination with the other drug?
hprotagonist 7y ago
note that Gregory Rigano is a lawyer with no medical training who has been writing about this with a cryptotrader (James M. Todaro). Distribution of preprint by google drive remains highly suspect, as does the fact that the nominally illustrious first author communicates by a gmail address despite google scholar listing him as having a normal educational email address https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=n8EF_6kAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=n8EF_6kAAAAJ... That said, i know plenty of intensely brilliant weirdo researchers -- but i'd take this with big grains of salt. and i have no idea why a z-pak is a booster for an antiviral therapy.
- majos 7y ago
  I really want this study to be legit, but there are a few more weird things: 1. the evidence-free claim of “full peer review”, 2. the fact that patients who refused or met “exclusion criteria” for the drug served as a portion of the control group, and were the only members of the control group from the same region as the experimental group, 3. the removal of people from the experiment group because they went to the ICU or died (only three of first and one of second, but a rather bizarre thing to happen before claiming 100% cure), 4. the lack of coverage from any major news source, despite this being reported about a day ago.
  - hprotagonist 7y ago
    i'm with you, i want this to be onto something but i'm like, constitutionally ill equipped to reject the null on this evidence. Too much time in the lab during normal life, maybe. To your points: - The twitter guy makes the peer review claim, and i think it's wrong. he is not an author of the paper or affiliated with them, he's just shilling it to elon musk for reasons. - regionality isn't something i'd considered. I can understand the exclusion group being the control in exeptional cases, like a global pandemic. - of more concern to me are the either confusing or cargo-culted figures at the end. what in the world is a t- and p value column doing next to age data? why are there nominal p-values per day of administration? - there might not be coverage, but merck is shipping a boatload of the stuff anyway: https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/bayer-preps-u-s-donation-malaria-med-chloroquine-to-help-covid-19-fight-report https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/bayer-preps-u-s-donation...
endorphone 7y ago
How is it “full peer reviewed” when it’s explicitly an early release draft? Just saying it’s peer reviewed when it clearly isn’t sounds the scam alarms. A Covid Forsythia. The study itself is interesting, I’m sure, to people in the field (though reading about the study is a bit odd. Of their test group they simply remove six from consideration for reasons like “they died”), but is irrelevant to a layman. We are undoubtedly going to have hundreds of “this is the cure” claims that aren’t the cure. The way this is presented has significant indicators of not being credible. Google Drive, some guy claiming that something that isn't peer reviewed at all is "full peer reviewed", pimped on Twitter. Is HN this gullible? How is this nonsense at the top?

troughway 7y ago

What does this mean for the build up of antibodies? Is reinfection likely to occur as a result of this?

war1025 7y ago

I really hope this turns out to be the magic bullet that saves us from this mess.

teddyvangogh 7y ago

looks promising. "A renowned research professor in France has reported successful results from a new treatment for Covid-19, with early tests suggesting it can stop the virus from being contagious in just six days. Professor Raoult is an infectious diseases specialist and head of the IHU Méditerranée Infection, who has been tasked by - and consulted by - the French government to research possible treatments of Covid-19." https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/French-researcher-in-Marseille-posts-successful-Covid-19-coronavirus-drug-trial-results https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/French-researche...

softwaredoug 7y ago

Is this something that be manufactured at scale to treat 1-4% of the world's population in the next few months?

voidmain 7y ago
I'm no industrial chemist, but from a glance at the chemical formula [1], I'm going to guess that it could be produced by the trainload (provided that you shoot the FDA first, which we should have done on the first day of the epidemic judging by their track record so far) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine
- kortex 7y ago
  Former process chemist here. Yep, you could produce trainloads of this stuff within the month if you bypass the FDA, and even if you do play by the book, current capacity could easily crank out kilos of GMP HQ a day.
  - Engineering-MD 7y ago
    Could you expand a bit on the required base materials and possible bottlenecks? Would third world countries be able to produce this, and would export restrictions on reagents/chemicals limit production for some countries?
gpm 7y ago
There were 5.7 million american prescriptions for Hydroxychloroquine in 2017, and the wholesale price quoted on wikipedia is 5 dollars for a months worth of pills. I don't know how difficult scaling up production is, but the above numbers make me hopeful.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

How many of the control group were cured?

war1025 7y ago
A tweet I saw yesterday said 95% recovered on the medicine. 90% of the control group still contagious. Haven't looked up the post again, but it was something I found either on that same twitter feed or a source he was pulling from.
- nostromo 7y ago
  Don’t 98%+ recover already?
  - war1025 7y ago
    I believe average hospital stay for those that need to be hospitalized can be upwards of 3 weeks though. So something that cuts it down to a week or avoids the need for the ICU bed altogether would be a game changer.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - joe_the_user 7y ago
    Wat? There are widespread report of lung damage for severe Covids patients who recover.
- mrep 7y ago
  From the doc [0]: "At day6 post-inclusion, 100% of patients treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin combination were virologicaly cured comparing with 57.1% in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine only, and 12.5% in the control group (p<0.001)." [0]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9RqfsmEx55FDum4xY_IlWSHnGbj/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9RqfsmEx55FDum4xY_IlWS...
7y ago

smallgovt 7y ago

Given that markets didn't react to this news 11 hours ago, I think it's safe to say that this doesn't have significant prospects of being a real cure.

war1025 7y ago
The markets are reacting to the total shutdown of the service sector. That's going to cause a lot of pain whether or not this turns out to be the answer.
- majos 7y ago
  If it turns out that there’s a cheap, widely available, already-studied treatment that achieves something even close to the 100% cure rate observed in the paper, the timeline for total shutdown looks much shorter, no?
  - war1025 7y ago
    > If it turns out That's the kicker. We are still waiting to see. One guy did it. Now others need to try it and see if it helps.
- smallgovt 7y ago
  You don't think the markets would skyrocket if a real cure that is easily manufactured was discovered today? Sure, there's still a lot of pain to follow but the markets have priced in a lot of really bad scenarios where the virus kills large numbers and shutdowns last a long time.

koolba 7y ago

Isn’t Azithromycin antibiotics? (Z-pack?) How would that help vs a virus? Or does it just help the body from having other unrelated things to also fight?

treis 7y ago
It has a broad effect on the immune system and inflammation beyond it's anti-bacterial effects. Lots of changes to the production/expression of different factors and cell mechanisms. I don't think it's fully understood how it helps in situations like this but probably related to inflammation and reducing the cytokine storm.
- koolba 7y ago
  Interesting. Is there any research on using it in isolation to treat this or other coronavirus? Or only in combination with the other drug?

hprotagonist 7y ago

note that Gregory Rigano is a lawyer with no medical training who has been writing about this with a cryptotrader (James M. Todaro). Distribution of preprint by google drive remains highly suspect, as does the fact that the nominally illustrious first author communicates by a gmail address despite google scholar listing him as having a normal educational email address https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=n8EF_6kAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=n8EF_6kAAAAJ... That said, i know plenty of intensely brilliant weirdo researchers -- but i'd take this with big grains of salt. and i have no idea why a z-pak is a booster for an antiviral therapy.

majos 7y ago
I really want this study to be legit, but there are a few more weird things: 1. the evidence-free claim of “full peer review”, 2. the fact that patients who refused or met “exclusion criteria” for the drug served as a portion of the control group, and were the only members of the control group from the same region as the experimental group, 3. the removal of people from the experiment group because they went to the ICU or died (only three of first and one of second, but a rather bizarre thing to happen before claiming 100% cure), 4. the lack of coverage from any major news source, despite this being reported about a day ago.
- hprotagonist 7y ago
  i'm with you, i want this to be onto something but i'm like, constitutionally ill equipped to reject the null on this evidence. Too much time in the lab during normal life, maybe. To your points: - The twitter guy makes the peer review claim, and i think it's wrong. he is not an author of the paper or affiliated with them, he's just shilling it to elon musk for reasons. - regionality isn't something i'd considered. I can understand the exclusion group being the control in exeptional cases, like a global pandemic. - of more concern to me are the either confusing or cargo-culted figures at the end. what in the world is a t- and p value column doing next to age data? why are there nominal p-values per day of administration? - there might not be coverage, but merck is shipping a boatload of the stuff anyway: https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/bayer-preps-u-s-donation-malaria-med-chloroquine-to-help-covid-19-fight-report https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/bayer-preps-u-s-donation...

endorphone 7y ago

How is it “full peer reviewed” when it’s explicitly an early release draft? Just saying it’s peer reviewed when it clearly isn’t sounds the scam alarms. A Covid Forsythia. The study itself is interesting, I’m sure, to people in the field (though reading about the study is a bit odd. Of their test group they simply remove six from consideration for reasons like “they died”), but is irrelevant to a layman. We are undoubtedly going to have hundreds of “this is the cure” claims that aren’t the cure. The way this is presented has significant indicators of not being credible. Google Drive, some guy claiming that something that isn't peer reviewed at all is "full peer reviewed", pimped on Twitter. Is HN this gullible? How is this nonsense at the top?