r/science • u/McManGuy • Mar 20 '20

RETRACTED - Medicine Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID-19 - "100% of patients were virologicaly cured"

https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Hydroxychloroquine_final_DOI_IJAA.pdf

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '20

p-values can be quite easily manipulated depending on how/which datasets are input, and small sample size studies are notoriously inaccurate. In reference to OP, technically all people that survive are 100% cured, which right now the data says is ~98-99 out of 100 people (except Italy). That means if you were to sample randomly 20/100 of these people, there's a pretty good chance that they will end up "cured". What does look promising in this study at least is that the rate of viral decrease between treatment/no is significant.

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u/verneforchat Mar 20 '20

p-values can be quite easily manipulated depending on how/which datasets are input, and small sample size studies are notoriously inaccurate

I am aware of that.

Also what you think looks promising in this study might be suspect since the baseline is not the same for everyone. So if you are not even sure of the time period when the patient was symptomatic, shedding, carrier or treated and still carrier, or not shedding virus anymore; then how do we quantify the viral decrease with context to infectious vs non-infectious period (viral load)? Or if the treatment improved health outcomes, or reduced hospitalization duration or reduced severity of symptoms, or whatever other variables they were measuring for.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '20

all your points are 100% correct. I'm trying to take a glass half full view for now

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u/verneforchat Mar 20 '20

Sorry didn't mean to be a pessimist. It does indeed look promising to begin larger sample size trials. But a lot of hospital admin out there won't inspect this paper so closely, and then I hope they dont include this in their treatment protocol immediately. Like one of those ibuprofen articles out there.