The WHO guideline on drugs to prevent COVID-19: small numbers- big conclusions.

ABSTRACT: The World Health Organization (WHO) living guideline on drugs to prevent COVID-19 has recently advised that ongoing trials evaluating hydroxychloroquine in chemoprophylaxis should stop. The WHO guideline cites "high certainty" evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis does not reduce mortality and does not reduce hospital admission, and "moderate certainty" evidence of poor tolerability because of a significantly increased rate of adverse events leading to drug discontinuation. Yet there is no such evidence. In the three pre-exposure chemoprophylaxis RCTs evaluated in the guideline there were no deaths and only two COVID-19-related hospital admissions, and there was a mistake in the analysis of the number of discontinuations (after correction the

SUBMITTER: Schilling WH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8356259 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature