Global Trial of Hydroxychloroquine is Suspended: WHO

A global study of hydroxychloroquine, a drug allegedly effective against COVID-19, will be temporarily paused due to the need for more safety data, World Health Organization(WHO) said Monday.

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According to WHO, its experts need to go over all available evidence to date, in order to prove right or wrong a paper published last week by The Lancet, a renowned British medical publication,  which ensured that people taking this anti-malarial drug were at higher risk of death and heart problems.

"The executive group behind WHO's global "Solidarity'' trial met on Saturday and decided to conduct a comprehensive review of all available data on hydroxychloroquine and that its use in the trial would be suspended for now," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

As stated in The Lancet, "it's been unable to confirm the benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, when used alone or with a macrolide, on in-hospital outcomes for COVID-19. Each of these drug regimens was associated with decreased in-hospital survival and an increased frequency of ventricular arrhythmias when used for the treatment of COVID-19." 

On that line, WHO's emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan stated that even when there wasn't any sign of safety problems with the drug during WHO trials to date, they must be cautious in the light of the new studies.

"We're just acting on an abundance of caution based on the recent results of all the studies to ensure that we can continue safely with that arm of the trial,'' Ryan explained.

Even when hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are not proven to be effective against the actual pandemic, they are approved for treating several illnesses such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and malaria.