12 ms·
Bayer donates 3M chloroquine phosphate tablets for potential Covid-19 treatment
- LinuxBender 7y agoAn alternate zinc ionophore with less side effects is Quercetin [1] [2] which some people here already take for other reasons, myself included. It is most beneficial if being taken prior to infection to slow the RNA transcoding process by getting more zinc into the cells, assuming one is not deficient in zinc to begin with. I mention this because by the time someone is talking to a doctor, the virus has likely already replicated in vast amounts. Chloroquine currently requires a prescription, at least in the U.S. I am neither a doctor or a scientist, as per my profile. Very few doctors study molecular biology as a hobby or as part of their career. [Edit] To be clear, I am not a doctor and this is not medical advise. Please research this topic yourself. There are many studies on nih.gov on zinc ioniphores. Here is a video discussing both compounds by a doctor. [3] They are also not giving medical advise. [1] - https://examine.com/supplements/quercetin/ https://examine.com/supplements/quercetin/ [2] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25050823 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25050823 [3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE4_LsftNKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE4_LsftNKM
- bulldog13 7y agoAre you a doctor or medical professional ?
- turndown 7y agoConsidering there is no edit on the original post, the answer has been in it since you asked the question.
- jessaustin 7y agoHow can we tell if HN comments have been edited? [I have now edited... but please don't say "I see that you added something in brackets"]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Spare_account 7y agoCan you please edit this one and I'll tell you what I see
- Spare_account 7y agoI see no indication that you've edited it.
- jessaustin 7y agoYes this contradicts GP claim that it's possible for HN users to tell whether comments have been edited.
- Alex3917 7y agoIf you want to see a doctor saying the same thing, just do a search on YouTube. I'm not really sure it changes the credibility of the information.
- capableweb 7y agoI wouldn't blindly trust it _just because_ a doctor said it, but I would definitely put more trust in a doctor giving medical advice than someone who is not a doctor or similar. Isn't the whole thing with medical advice and doctors that doctors are being trusted and believed in, meaning they have credibility.
- amelius 7y agoBut then you get "search bias" which would lower the credibility.
- mirimir 7y agoDoctors also claimed that smoking tobacco was safe. Just sayin'.
- fb1994 7y agoLomatium root has proved itself during 1918 Spanish Flu http://debrasnaturalgourmet.com/lomatium-root-possibly-the-best-anti-viral/ http://debrasnaturalgourmet.com/lomatium-root-possibly-the-b...
- WalterSear 7y agoIt's also useful in conjunction with chloroquine: > In conclusion, our study strongly suggests co administration of antioxidant flavonoid like quercetin along with CQ for antimalarial therapy. This is particularly important when CQ is administered as long-term prophylactic treatment for malaria as chronic exposure has shown to be resulting in higher dose level of drug in the body. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3625570/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3625570/
- HarryHirsch 7y agoBioavailability of quercetin is low. That doesn't prevent the supplement industry from profiting from it, unfortunately. The upside is, since it's poorly absorbed from the gut, you probably won't die from it.
- amanaplanacanal 7y agoThere are formulations with higher bio-availability. Try Thorne Research Quercenase.
- aldoushuxley001 7y agoWould that mean Green tea could help? since Green tea is high in flavinoids like Quercetin.
- pombrand 7y agoQuercetin has an EC50 value of 84 uM in vitro against SARS-CoV, Chloroquine around 6 uM vs SARS-CoV-2 and it's a lot better absorbed - so to get any antiviral effect from quercetin you'd probably need at least 10 grams pr day.
- Xunxi 7y agoWhat will the effect of drinking quinine tonic be as a preventative measure?
- rimliu 7y agoMost likely none, given the concentration.
- Etheryte 7y agoI can't find the thread right now, but someone did a back of the napkin calculation that you'd need to have 200 gin tonics a day to reach any kind of a reasonable level.
- overcast 7y agoIf I have to stay in the same house for the next 3 months, I might come to that.
- protomyth 7y agoI will say that on a number of people I am calling to do orders or follow-up before we close, that I have heard a large amount of children in the backgrounds. Lot of apologizing which isn't really needed, but I guess it is a bit different for folks and some of them might be ready to do gin experiments soon. I do answer their survey that they all are very professional.
- DanBC 7y agoIs this the thread? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22602008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22602008
- Etheryte 7y agoYeah, that's the one. Thanks for sharing it.
- 7y ago
- fab1an 7y agoA word of warning to all who consider stocking up on and self-medicating with Chloroquine: while this is a well-studied medicine, it can have severe side effects, particularly in the eyes (including blindness). That said, let's hope it has some effect as current anecdata suggests.
- blhack 7y agoIt's not anecdata. There was a small clinical study which was just completed, and showed almost miraculous success with hydroxychloroquine. https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Hydroxychloroquine_final_DOI_IJAA.pdf https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
- prostheticvamp 7y agoNope, not a miracle, top comment takes it apart.
- WalterSear 7y agoIt's also taken on a long term basis. The risk of side effects for short term use is lower. It's also important to understand the medication interactions, which can be quite serious.
- fuckyah 7y agoit seems to be prescription only, so shortages due to hording should be minimal...
- roenxi 7y agoI wonder if there is a point where literally everyone just gets a dose of chloroquine. My understanding is it stops the virus replicating and so is almost a preventative rather than a treatment.
- WalterSear 7y agoIt's way too nasty a drug IME. The side effects can be really unpleasant, not even considering the possible long term effects. But it would make sense for medical staff and other people in high risk occupations.
- pbreit 7y agoIt's taken regularly by millions. Are the side effects really that nasty?
- WalterSear 7y agoI can only speak from my own experience, taking it prophylactically while traveling overseas in a malaria prone area. I had to discontinue it after 5 days because it was keeping me from my work: profound, irrational depression, constant cold sweats, painful tinnitus, nausea and disabling fatigue. Perhaps these side effects would have gone away over the long term. Autoimmune diseases, can be way, way worse, particularly arthropathies, since, if unchecked, they cause permanent damage. Also IME, as a rule disease modifying drugs have really nasty side effects. You take them anyway, because you have no better alternative :(
- casion 7y agoI take 600mg hydroxychloroquinine daily with no side effects, it varies from person to person.
- pbreit 7y agoIt may not work as a prophylactic (preventative measure) and in fact, as an immunosuppressant, may actually make things worse. For example, it enhances influenza: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25715935 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25715935
- viggity 7y agoDoes anyone know how quickly the production of Chloroquine Phosphate and Hydroxychloroquine can be ramped up (say, to the tune of 500M people * 7g per "course" = 3.5 million kilograms? I tried finding out how much chloroquine is prescribed world wide per year, but couldn't find it. It may give us a clue into how much is already being used. I know that it isn't used except for pregnant women as a malaria treatement because the first line antimalarials aren't proven save in pregnancy, but also that the malaria protozoa has some resistence to Chloroquine in many countries (Ecuador, among others)
- oli5679 7y agoLuckily we make a lot of tonic water!
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoNot a medicinal chemist, but here is an overview of the synthesis routes we know of: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/chloroquine https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/chloroquine From this, it doesn't look like there are any major hurdles in the necessary precursors. E.g. chloroaniline is very commonly used for making many drugs (incl. chlorhexidine), methyl acrylate is similarly in the six-figure-tonnes-per-year category, and that diamine also looks to have a nice synthesis route. Fingers and toes crossed for this one.
- jjjensen90 7y agoFrom what I understand, it is a very cheap and easy drug to manufacture, having been designed for mass production in a previous era, as well as being a relatively simple chemical formula (some hydrocarbons, amines, a chloride?).
- pbreit 7y agoI don't know. But there's more than enough available now. https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/bayer-preps-u-s-donation-malaria-med-chloroquine-to-help-covid-19-fight-report https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/bayer-preps-u-s-donation...
- blhack 7y agoTo those who aren't aware of it, there was a recently completed (small) clinical study of hydroxychloroquine (and in some cases HCQ plus z-pack) just completed in France. The results are here: https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Hydroxychloroquine_final_DOI_IJAA.pdf https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/20... They're miraculous. This is a well-studied, mass-produced drug which has been around for 70 years and appears to be highly effective at treating this virus.
- sunseb 7y ago[Message deleted because I agree I cannot backup my claim and I may be wrong.]
- habosa 7y agoCan you explain more about this?
- bsaul 7y agoYeah, you’ll need some serious source to backup this claim. Having a deal with a lab from the same country, that produces a drug you’ve been studying for decades in your lab and hospital isn’t something that justifies dumping on someone’s reputation. Especially if the person in question looks like he has enough papers published to justify his claims. Ps: i do agree that his tone and style looks unorthodox. But results is the only thing we should care about.
- cycrutchfield 7y ago>They're miraculous. Where are you seeing that? Because what I see is a very non-rigorous, non-randomized study. Also, what about this part: >A total of 26 patients received hydroxychloroquine and 16 were control patients. Six hydroxychloroquine-treated patients were lost in follow-up during the survey because of early cessation of treatment. Reasons are as follows: three patients were transferred to intensive care unit, including one transferred on day2 post-inclusion who was PCR-positive on day1, one transferred on day3 post-inclusion who was PCR-positive on days1-2 and one transferred on day4 post-inclusion who was PCRpositive on day1 and day3; one patient died on day3 post inclusion and was PCR-negative on day2; one patient decided to leave the hospital on day3 post-inclusion and was PCR-negative on days1-2; finally, one patient stopped the treatment on day3 post-inclusion because of nausea and was PCR-positive on days1-2-3. Really easy to have "miraculous" results when 20+% of your treatment group were excluded and also happened to be the ones with the most severe symptoms.
- hprotagonist 7y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22628302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22628302 Derek lowe reviews the evidence here and has far more of a positive take on it than i'd expected. (as in , "not obvious nonsense!")
- HarryHirsch 7y agoNo, he doesn't. Derek has a favourable opinion of favipiravir and in the footnote he calls the French trial "messy". That's very polite, considering the shape of the data.
- hprotagonist 7y agoyep. that’s better than i expected. check my post history if you like, i’m skeptical too.
- paulmd 7y agoBoy, "messy" data when performing initial experimental administration of a drug, during an outbreak with no officially approved treatment, with limited testing capacity.which is piling up bodies faster than mortuaries can cremate them. How shameful. People are nitpicking. Yes, "we need further studies", that's at the end of literally every research paper ever, but the longer you delay the more people die. It's no different than signing up for an experimental cancer drug. There are no alternatives that are known to work. You take the best shot with the possibility that looks promising right now. The alternative is dying without trying. It's kind of a weirdly US-centric position, both from science fetishism and the fact that we're the the country with the fewest deaths so far. Oh golly gee I guess we better wait 18 months for a double-blind clinical trial and FDA approval and a Nature article. Other countries have the bodies piling up and they are pushing ahead, because a chance is better than no chance. Just like with cancer.
- HarryHirsch 7y agoIt's not that you didn't have a supply of patients for clinical trials. You have to make sure that your proposed therapy works, else you waste money and lives. If your wonder drug is so great you'd notice immediately in the data and would cut the trial short. What is concerning that the Chinese didn't notice a great effect, else they would have told the rest of the world.
- jacquesm 7y agoWARNING: To all those who are reading threads like these and intend to self medicate: you should not do this unless you are medically qualified or have a doctor prescribe you whatever medication might help. The risk of side effects is substantial and there is a reason many countries keep quack laws on the book to go after those who practice medicine without a license. Medical advice should be given by doctors and what works for someone else may not work for you (be ineffective), cause side effects of all degrees of severity. Note that the original title includes the word 'potential'.
- teddyvangogh 7y agochloroquine is prescription only in the US.
- jacquesm 7y agoI know. It might even work. But until there is really hard proof and the side effects are well documented saying it's out there is tantamount to telling people to self-experiment, prescriptions or not. Illegal drugs are a thing.
- chimichangga 7y agoHe didn't "say it's out there". Bayer did, who apparently think there's merit to this enough to issue a press release of their own and donate 3M pills. Bayer probably knows more about this than you. Also, reuters, cnn, msnbc, etc. covered it. Making the info available here in HN is not tantamount to telling people to self-experiment. that is laughable.
- bufferoverflow 7y agoOr on the dark webs.
- tim333 7y agoI don't totally buy the never take medicine without a doctor bit. I mean lots of people do with paracetamol and the like. Some common sense is required.
- wazoox 7y agoWarning: chloroquine has strong side-effects, and very high toxicity, unfortunately pretty close to therapeutic doses, that may cause serious arrhythmia, and even heart attacks. Don't ever try to self-medicate with chloroquine.
- Lldjjxnn 7y agoDoes hydroxycholoquinine have the same side effect profile as choloquinine
- wazoox 7y agoOverdose seems rarer, but the effects are similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine#Overdose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine#Overdose
- dang 7y agoCould you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- pbreit 7y agoWARNING: the above is almost certainly wrong. Citation should be provided. The preponderance of the evidence suggests that it's a well-understood drug that has been around for decades, used by 10s of millions for not only malaria but also arthritis. In fact it is safe enough that it is available over the counter in some countries. [1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroquine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroquine
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- capkutay 7y agoI wouldn't say 'take this with a grain of salt', but I also wouldn't brush it off as fake either. Yes, the french study wasn't structured perfectly. But such a trial isn't possible in the timeframe we're looking at. If enough respected virologists (like Didier Raoult) and doctors in China/South Korea see some positive signals, it makes sense to prepare for the event that it does indeed help. Keep in mind, this is already being used as a treatment in the US today. They likely have even better data than we do. Or if they don't, they still feel like it's worth taking a calculated risk on.
- stevespang 7y agoIt's only enough for 75,000 patients.
- morninglight 7y agoStarting back in the 60's, hundreds of thousands of Americans serving in the military and peace corps in areas with malaria were given daily chloroquine for extented periods of time. Think Vietnam. How long does it take to evaluate safety?
- lithiumfrost 7y agoIt’s prescribed here in Canada, but at least in Alberta, the prescription goes along with annual in-depth retina screening to catch retinal toxicity before there’s permanent vision loss. It’s ok, but there’s a reason it’s not available over the counter.
- tim333 7y agoNot sure they are testing that. Efficacy is more questionable.
- pknerd 7y agoPakistan with other few Asian countries already using it for Corona Virus patients. Even 300K tablets sent to China for curing the disease.