President Donald Trump promoted a two-drug mixed drink Saturday to fight coronavirus. The medicines together have been connected to cardiac arrhythmia and abrupt death.
Worried doctors reacted to Trump’s tweet crowing about what might be “one of the greatest game-changers in the history of medicine” with cautions about the severe negative effects– and immediate pleas not to attempt to obtain the drugs without a medical prescription in consultation with a medical professional.
HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a genuine opportunity to be one of the biggest video game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains – Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works much better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents) …
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2020
… be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE PERISHING, MOVE QUICK, and GOD BLESS EVERYBODY! @US_FDA @SteveFDA @CDCgov @DHSgov
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2020
The drugs together have not been authorized as safe or efficient versus the disease by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
Trump referred to the drugs at his Saturday press rundown and asked: “ What do we have to lose? I feel great about it.”
After the president left the instruction, his leading science consultant Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Illness was asked if he had “any sense” of the drug mixed drink the president referred to, and whether Trump’s “74- and-a-half million Twitter fans ought to be taking medical advice from him or from someone else.”
Fauci responded that there may be positive “ anecdotal reports“– informally observed specific cases– about the drugs, however they haven’t yet been proven to work, or to be safe. “If you truly want to definitively understand if something works, you got to do the kind of trial that [gives you] the excellent info,” he stated. “The president is talking about hope for people,” not science, he kept in mind.
Please don’t take hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) plus Azithromycin for #COVID19 UNLESS your physician recommends it. Both drugs affect the QT interval of your heart and can result in arrhythmias and sudden death, specifically if you are taking other medications or have a heart disease.
— Dr. Edsel Salvana (@EdselSalvana) March 21, 2020
Hydroxychloroq