Hospitals should completely stop using the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 patients, even if it’s a clinical trial, according to new medical guidelines.
On Friday, the Infectious Diseases Society of America revised its guidelines on the treatment of the novel coronavirus. It restricted the use of the anti-malaria drug which had been endorsed by US President Donald Trump as a way to deal the pandemic.
The society now recommends not to use hydroxychloroquine either by itself or along with the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19 patients, even at hospitals.
It had previously recommended limited use of hydroxychloroquine in trials.
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“IDSA’s expert guidelines panel concluded that higher certainty benefits (e.g., mortality reduction) for the use of these treatments are now highly unlikely even if additional high quality data would become available,” the group said in a statement, according to Bloomberg.
Earlier, a National Institutes of Health panel called against the use of hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin due to an increased risk of cardiac arrest. The agency halted its own clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine in June.
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