Lancet journal says it's concerned about the validity of widely cited hydroxychloroquine study touted as a COVID-19 cure

The Lancet medical journal said on Tuesday “serious scientific questions” had been brought to its attention about the validity of the data behind a widely cited and already corrected study on the dangers of the use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients with COVID-19. The Lancet study published on May 22 found that the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which US President Donald Trump took and has urged others to use, was tied to an increased risk of death in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Several clinical trials were put on hold after the study was published. [caption id=“attachment_8442551” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] A chemist holds a pack of hydroxychloroquine tablets in Mumbai, India. A Friday, May 22, 2029 report in the journal Lancet shows malaria drugs pushed by US President Donald Trump as treatments for the coronavirus not only did not help but were tied to a greater risk of death and heart rhythm problems in a study of nearly 100,000 patients around the world. Image credit: AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool[/caption] The article, called “Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis,” was an observational study - meaning it compiled real-world data, rather than conducting a traditional clinical trial - and used data provided by healthcare data analytics firm Surgisphere. The Lancet last week issued a correction to the study regarding the location of some patients following criticism of its methodology but said the conclusions were not changed. Also last week, nearly 150 doctors signed an open letter to the journal calling the article’s conclusions into question and asking to make public the peer review comments that led to it being published. (Reporting by Michael Erman, Editing by Franklin Paul and Richard Chang) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.