The benefits of hydroxychloroquine being investigated in multi-site clinical trial launching in April
Researchers are investigating whether hydroxychloroquine – a commonly used anti-malarial and autoimmune drug – can prevent COVID-19.
A multi-site clinical trial, led by the University of Washington Department of Global Health/International Clinical Research Center (ICRC) in collaboration with NYU Grossman School of Medicine, aims to definitively determine whether hydroxychloroquine can prevent transmission in people exposed to the virus.
“We currently don’t know if hydroxychloroquine works, but we will learn in as short a timeframe as possible what the outcome is,” said principal investigator Ruanne Barnabas, Associate Professor of Global Health in the UW School of Medicine and School of Public Health.
Her team is starting to enroll 2,000 participants referred by physicians in six sites who are close contacts of persons with confirmed or pending COVID-19 diagnoses.
Participants will be randomly assigned to take hydroxychloroquine or a placebo over two weeks, and nasal swab samples will be collected and tested daily to confirm new COVID-19 infections across the two groups. Sandoz, a Novartis division, has donated the hydroxychloroquine doses needed to conduct the study.
The trial is slated to run over eight weeks. If all goes well, they will have answers by summer.
“Our goal is to stop transmission of COVID-19 in the community,” Barnabas said.
Read the original article here: https://globalhealth.washington.edu/news/2020/03/30/does-antimalarial-drug-prevent-covid-19-new-dgh-study-seeks-answers