Its name is now known throughout the world because, for three months, the news of hydroxychloroquine has been closely linked to that of the coronavirus. Latest twist to date: WHO announced Wednesday evening that clinical trials using this molecule were resuming, while a study published in the scientific journal The Lancet is increasingly criticized within the scientific community.
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To understand the decision of the WHO, it must be remembered that the institution had stopped clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine after the publication of the study by The Lancet , which concluded that this molecule was not only ineffective but also dangerous for patients. Now that doubt hangs over these conclusions, the WHO retropedal. Will France, too, change its position on hydroxychloroquine? Not for the moment: the health authorities are reversing neither on the prescription of hydroxychloroquine in the hospital, nor on the suspension of clinical trials.
Véran wrote to "The Lancet"
For the moment, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran has written to The Lancet to ask the review "a rereading of the raw data as they had been delivered" on the molecule. This was announced by government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye on Wednesday. But the government is still arguing that last week's decision to stop using hydroxychloroquine is also based on other studies.
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It is however the article in The Lancet which today creates controversy, even internally. The direction of the review issued on Tuesday a "warning" against the study published in its columns on May 22, which suggested an excess mortality of patients treated with this molecule, associated or not with an antibiotic, and a resurgence of heart accidents.
Two main criticisms
This "warning" is coupled with the urgent call by many scientists to withdraw the article from the journal. Two main criticisms have emerged. First, the study method, which is not the most solid: we do not start from random patients who are given a drug to check its effectiveness, but an American company specializing in data processing, Surgisphere says it has "sucked up" the medical records of 96,000 patients in about 700 hospitals worldwide. It is therefore raw data, more difficult to interpret.
The second criticism advanced by the detractors of this study relates to errors, in particular of hospital coding. For example, the 73 deaths of a country were attributed to Australia, where there were only 67 deaths. The lead author of the study, Professor Mandeep Mehra, of the Harvard medical school in the United States, turned to the data processing company Surgisphere for urgent explanations.