AFPHydroxychloroquine-pil
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 09:34
In the initial phase of the corona pandemic, several hundred people probably died in the Netherlands due to the side effects of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. Medical microbiologist Marc Bonten says that in the Volkskrantin response to an international study into the death rate associated with the drug.
There are no precise figures for the Netherlands, Bonten emphasizes in an explanation NOS Radio 1 News. “In that first wave, about 12,000 to 15,000 people became ill, about 20 percent died. Ten percent of them died due to side effects of that drug, so about a few hundred.”
Few alternatives
Especially in the first months, the drug was administered to seriously ill corona patients. According to the microbiologist, this is mainly because there were few alternatives and the situation was acute.
“In the first wave we did not have a single drug that was proven to be effective against the virus,” says Bonten. “With hydroxychloroquine, there was some laboratory evidence that it could inhibit the virus. And that’s why it has been widely used around the world.”
From the international researchconducted by French researchers, found that a total of almost 17,000 people died as a result of hydroxychloroquine treatment in the early stages of the pandemic in Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the US.
During the first wave of the corona pandemic, the risk of death with this antimalarial drug was 11 percent higher than with the usual treatment, the French researchers say. The results were recently published in the journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.
‘Game changer’
Hydroxychloroquine was originally used to prevent and control malaria. Other applications were later added, such as against rheumatism. In the first months of the corona pandemic, the drug was also used in seriously ill corona patients. In March 2020, then US President Trump even called hydroxychloroquine in combination with the antibacterial drug azithromycin a potential “game changer”.
Side effects of hydroxychloroquine include cardiac arrhythmias and possibly cardiac arrest. The treatment with the malaria drug was soon questioned. The Dutch Association of General Practitioners, among others, announced that corona patients do not benefit from hydroxychloroquine. It had no effect on the number of hospital admissions, the risk of death, the severity of the symptoms or the speed of recovery.
2024-01-10 08:34:31
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