A new fraud to accuse hydroxychloroquine?
We remember that in 2020 The Lancet withdrew a study suggesting that hydroxychloroquine increased mortality and cardiac arrhythmias in Covid‑19 patients[1].
A new French study attempts to show that hydroxychloroquine caused more than 16,000 deaths. Yet this study is based, among other things, on the misinterpretation of a Belgian study.
BAM! Detox lets the cat out of the bag…
16,000 deaths?
Recently, the Société Française de Pharmacologie (French Society of Pharmacology) presented a model according to which hydroxychloroquine was the cause of more than 16,000 deaths in six countries during the first “wave” of the SARS‑CoV‑2 epidemic.
|
|
The lead author of this model, Prof. J.C. Lega (Internal Medicine), explained its methodology and results in this short video:
Our attention was drawn to a figure that seemed implausible to us in the Belgian data, so we tried to understand.
51% of Belgian patients treated with hydroxychloroquine?
Indeed, the authors of the model claim that 51% of all patients hospitalised for Covid during the “first wave” received hydroxychloroquine.
Yes, you read that right: 51% of hospitalised Belgian patients supposedly received hydroxychloroquine.
That must surprise you a great deal too!
We will show that, as you have guessed, this is completely false:
1) Period studied by the author of the model: first wave.
Number of hospitalisations in Belgium during this period according to the authors of the model: 19,644.
Number confirmed by the Sciensano website: from 1/3/20 to 31/8/20: 19,652.
|
|
|
|
2) To find out the HCQ prescription rate, the authors use the Belgian study published by Sciensano. In this study, which concerns 8,910 patients, we can read that 51% of them received HCQ, i.e. 4,542 patients. But the model applies this 51% prescription rate to ALL patients hospitalised in Belgium during the period studied. Whereas this 51% HCQ prescription rate only applied to the 8,910 patients in the Belgian HCQ study, and not to all hospitalised Belgian patients.
|
|
|
|
3) By wrongly applying this 51% HCQ prescription rate to all hospitalised patients, the author of the model arrives at a figure of 10,018 patients on HCQ. Whereas in reality there were only 4,542 patients on HCQ.
4) Then, to this false figure of 10,018 hospitalised patients on HCQ, the author of the model applies a Covid mortality rate of 22% and therefore calculates that there were 2,424 deaths on HCQ. Whereas in reality there were only 804.
5) And to this false figure of 2,424 deaths on HCQ, the author applies the 10% mortality rate attributed to HCQ taken from the Recovery study, a study in which patients received 2,400 mg of hydroxychloroquine per day, i.e. 4 times the dose, and which already had a 25% mortality rate in the control group (i.e. patients at a severe stage). He therefore deduces that 240 patients died in Belgium because of hydroxychloroquine.
|
|
A reversed interpretation
Although they claim to have used the official databases of the countries studied, we can therefore already see that, for Belgium, the authors of the model claim the opposite of what Sciensano concluded about the study it conducted. Indeed, on the page of its website, we can read:
“The study of data on patients hospitalised in Belgium shows that of the 8,000 patients meeting the inclusion criteria of the analysis, around 4,500 received treatment based on hydroxychloroquine. Multivariate statistical analysis (to correct for as many confounding factors as possible) shows that treatment with a low dose of hydroxychloroquine as prescribed in Belgian hospitals was associated with lower hospital mortality than in patients who did not receive this treatment.”
And:
“It is nevertheless important to document its use during the first wave of the epidemic and to show that there is in any case no signal of excess mortality in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine according to the Belgian instructions.”
|
|
A second proof of the REAL number of hospitalised Belgian patients who received hydroxychloroquine can be found in the report of this session of the Chamber of Representatives dated 16 June 2020:
https://www.dekamer.be/doc/CCRI/pdf/55/ic209.pdf
On page 24, the number of 5,000 patients is confirmed in the question put by Dominiek Sneppe to Ms Maggie De Block, Minister of Health.
|
|
An error?
We can therefore see very clearly that the authors of this model picked out different data… and put them together in their own way to achieve their goal of attributing false excess mortality to hydroxychloroquine. Going so far as to claim the opposite of the conclusion written by the authors of the official Belgian study they used.
The fraud is therefore plain to see as far as the Belgian figures are concerned.
What about the other countries, then? Is it plausible (and true) to say that 84% of all hospitalised patients in Spain received HCQ? And 82% of all hospitalised patients in Italy?
The authors do not provide links to the studies they used for each country, but we found one concerning Spain:
Hydroxychloroquine and Mortality in SARS‑Cov‑2 Infection; the HOPECovid- 19 Registry | Bentham Science
It concerns 6,217 patients, of whom 5,094 (82%) received hydroxychloroquine.
With this one study out of the six the authors say they used, we are still very far from the total number of patients hospitalised in Spain during the first wave (104,715).
But even assuming that the other five studies did cover all hospitalised patients, once again we observe that, as in the Belgian study, hydroxychloroquine showed a substantial reduction in mortality: 17.5% deaths in the cohort that received it versus 34.1% in patients who did not. The beneficial effects are very visible on the survival curve graphs.
|
|
The media (too) quick off the mark
Although this model is still under review and has therefore not yet been validated by peers, the media were quick to spread the information:
|
|
After “Lancetgate”, are we witnessing a new fraud aimed at accusing hydroxychloroquine?
Is this new French “study” part of the smear campaign currently being waged against Prof. Raoult?
In any case, it has been established that the interpretation of the Belgian data used in the model of this study is wrong. And one has to admit that when one is forced to use a model, it is because the real studies do not give the results one wants.
BAM! Detox.
*BAM! Detox brings together university professors, doctors, people working in the pharmaceutical and medical field and independent journalists. BAM! Detox aims to analyse and verify the information circulated in the media and on social networks.
Illustration based on an image by NicoElNino on Adobe Stock.
[1] « The Lancet » annonce le retrait de son étude sur l’hydroxychloroquine
