More than a dozen people died in a recent clinical trial of Trump’s coronavirus “miracle cure,” hydroxychloroquine, resulting in death threats against medical researchers in Brazil, according to a published study.
The Brazilian study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open, was ultimately halted by a safety monitoring board before even a quarter of the planned 440 patients were enrolled, The Guardian reported. Eighty-one patients with covid-19 or suspected covid-19 were given a daily regimen of chloroquine, a congener of the supposedly less toxic hydroxychloroquine. The patients were separated into a high-dose and low-dose group.
The study involved 21 research institutions in Brazil, Spain, and Mozambique.
The Brazilian study was conducted in the city of Manaus, in the Brazilian state of Amazon, and aimed to evaluate two different doses of the drug. While 41 patients received a high dose of 600 milligrams of the drug twice daily for 10 days, the other group of 40 patients received a lower dose of 450 milligrams daily for 10 days, The Lancet reported.
On the fifth day of the study, the high-dose group had to be interrupted due to the deaths of 11 patients compared with four deaths in the low-dose group.
“The only conclusion you can take from the study is that this drug, when used in high doses, is not safe,” Marcus Lacerda, the principal investigator of the clinical trial, told The Lancet.
The unfavorable outcome of the study in Brazil did not go over well with the government. Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the Brazilian president, called it “a fake study aimed at demonizing the drug.”
In one tweet, Eduardo Bolsonaro claimed that the study’s authors were affiliated with the party funded by ex-Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He called for an investigation.
Soon after, Lacerda claimed he started to receive death threats through social media. He had to request police protection.
The death threats have outraged many in the medical community. Epidemiologist and Harvard health economist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, who identifies as a health justice advocate and “pillwhistleblower,” tweeted, “SCIENCE should never be silenced. Scientists should never be attacked with death threats. This is a disturbing trend: ‘Unfavorable results from a chloroquine clinical trial led to death threats and animosity towards researchers in Brazil.’”
When the paper was published in JAMA, the threats stopped, Lacerda said, indicating that publishing the study in a peer-reviewed high-impact journal may have shielded the researcher and his family.
“When we first announced we were going to test chloroquine to treat covid-19 we were seen as heroes in Brazil,” Lacerda said. “People sent us encouraging messages and everyone was excited. However, when the study’s results came out, the attitude changed.”
Chloroquine is a drug traditionally used to treat malaria and has potential adverse effects, especially related to cardiovascular function, according to health experts. Chloroquine and a related drug, hydroxychloroquine, when combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, have been touted by Trump as a potential treatment for coronavirus. Trump called it a potential “game-changer” despite serious known risks and lack of medical data. At least one man has died and a woman was hospitalized after taking chloroquine, The Guardian reported.
The CIA website warned agency staff against using the drug.
Meanwhile, retail sales of hydroxychloroquine in the U.S. have increased drastically, doubling in March to more than $50 million compared to March 2019, according to market research firm IQVIA, which tracks prescriptions dispensed by retail pharmacies.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cautioned against using the drug to treat coronavirus patients outside of hospitals. More than 830,000 prescriptions for the drug were filled for the generic and name-brand version of the drug, Plaquenil, in March — up from 460,000 prescriptions written during the same time last year, according to the FDA data, CNN reported.
The covid-19 pandemic has hit Brazil extremely hard. On May 28, Brazil’s Health Ministry reported a daily record of 26,417 new coronavirus cases for a total of 438,238 — second only to the U.S. in confirmed cases.
Brazil’s death toll increased by 1,156 in a single day to 26,754 confirmed fatalities from covid-19, Reuters reported.
