LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists are resuming COVID-19 trials of the now world-famous drug hydroxychloroquine, as confusion continues to reign about the anti-malarial hailed by U.S. President Donald Trump as a potential “game-changer” in fighting the pandemic.
The renewed research push follows widespread criticism of the quality of data in a study that on Thursday was retracted. The article, originally published in influential medical journal The Lancet, had found high risks associated with the treatment.
The World Health Organization, which last week paused trials when The Lancet study showed the drug was tied to an increased risk of death in hospitalized patients, said on Wednesday it was ready to resume trials.
The WHO’s change of mind is “a wise decision”, according to Martin Landray, co-lead scientist on the Recovery trial, the world’s largest research project into existing drugs that might be repurposed to treat COVID-19 patients.
“What all this episode really reflects is that without randomised trials, there is huge uncertainty,” said Landray, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Oxford university.
Randomised studies are the gold standard in research, randomly assigning a treatment to one group of people and a dummy to another group so that the two can be compared. The Lancet study was a “retrospective observational” study, using a data set from an analytics firm, to see what effects the drug had had on some COVID-19 patients, compared to those who did not get it.
The WHO’s about-face came after nearly 150 doctors signed a letter to the Lancet outlining concerns about the data of the observational study published on May 22. O