ReviewAmerican journal of cardiovascular disease2021
Efficacy and safety of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 patients-a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
Review in American journal of cardiovascular disease, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 26 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pregnancy and COVID-19: high or low risk of vertical transmission.Clinical and experimental medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Nanomedicine Approaches for Autophagy Modulation in Cancer Therapy.Small science · 2025Article
- Investigational medications in 9,638 hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19: lessons from the "fail-and-learn" strategy during the first two waves of the pandemic in 2020.Patient safety in surgery · 2023Article
- The failure of drug repurposing for COVID-19 as an effect of excessive hypothesis testing and weak mechanistic evidence.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2022Article
- Standard of care for COVID-19 in randomized clinical trials registered in trial registries and published in preprint servers and scholarly journals: a cross-sectional study.BMC medical research methodology · 2022Article
- Assessment of Recovery Time, Worsening, and Death among Inpatients and Outpatients with COVID-19, Treated with Hydroxychloroquine or Chloroquine plus Azithromycin Combination in Burkina Faso.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2022Observational
- Drug safety of frequently used drugs and substances for self-medication in COVID-19.Therapeutic advances in drug safety · 2022Review
- The Complexity of SARS-CoV-2 Infection and the COVID-19 Pandemic.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Review
- Acute respiratory distress syndrome in COVID-19: possible mechanisms and therapeutic management.Pneumonia (Nathan Qld.) · 2021Review
- Antirheumatic Drug Intake Influence on Occurrence of COVID-19 Infection in Ambulatory Patients with Immune-Mediated Inflammatory Diseases: A Cohort Study.Rheumatology and therapy · 2021Article
- Current Potential Therapeutic Approaches against SARS-CoV-2: A Review.Biomedicines · 2021Review
- Drug repurposing against SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV.Future microbiology · 2021Article
- Efficacy and safety of hydroxychloroquine as pre-and post-exposure prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis of blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2021Article
- Tenofovir, Another Inexpensive, Well-Known and Widely Available Old Drug Repurposed for SARS-COV-2 Infection.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused significant morbidity and mortality worldwide and an effective treatment is needed. Chloroquine (CQ) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) have shown in vitro antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 which causes the disease, but the evidence from in vivo studies so far has been inconclusive.
objectiveTo evaluate the efficacy and safety of CQ and HCQ in the treatment of COVID-19. DATA SOURCES: We systematically searched the PubMed, Embase, MEDLINE, Cochrane CENTRAL, CINAHL, Scopus, Joanna Briggs Institute Database, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR) for all articles published between 01 January 2020 to 15 September 2020 on CQ/HCQ and COVID-19 using a predefined search protocol; without any language restrictions. A search of grey literature repositories (New York Academy of Medicine Grey Literature and Open Grey), and pre-publication server deposits (medRxIV and bioRxIV) was also performed. STUDY SELECTION: Randomized clinical trials (RCT) which compared CQ/HCQ to standard supportive therapy in treating COVID-19 were included. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Data were extracted from original publications by four independent reviewers. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration's assessment tool. Data were meta-analyzed using a random-effect models. Results are reported according to PRISMA guidelines. Main Outcome(s) and Measure(s): The primary prespecified efficacy outcome was all-cause mortality. The primary safety outcome was any adverse effect attributed to use of CQ/HCQ.
resultsEight RCTs were included and pooled in the mortality meta-analysis (6,592 unique participants; mean age = 59.4 years; 42% women). CQ/HCQ did not show any mortality benefit when compared to standard supportive therapy (Pooled Relative Risk [RR] 1.07; 95% CI = 0.97-1.18; I CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Evidence from currently published RCTs do not demonstrate any added benefit for the use of CQ or HCQ in the treatment of COVID-19 patients.
Indexed as
Identifiers
33815925PMC8012280W3140431337What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.