(Recasts, adding call to WHO, context, trial details)
By Kate Kelland and Alistair Smout
LONDON, June 5 (Reuters) - British scientists halted a major
drug trial on Friday after it found that the anti-malarial
hydroxychloroquine, touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a
potential "game changer" in the pandemic, was "useless" at
treating COVID-19 patients.
"This is not a treatment for COVID-19. It doesn't work,"
Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor who is co-leading
the RECOVERY trial, told reporters.
"This result should change medical practice worldwide. We
can now stop using a drug that is useless."
Vocal support from Trump raised expectations for the
decades-old drug that experts said could have been a cheap and
widely available tool, if proven to work, in fighting the
pandemic, which has infected more than 6.4 million people and
killed nearly 400,000 worldwide
Controversy surrounding the drug grew after a study
published in medical journal The Lancet last month raised safety
concerns and led several COVID-19 studies of it to be halted.
The Lancet study was then retracted on Thursday after its
authors said they were unsure about its data.
Landray, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Oxford
University, noted the "huge speculation" about the drug as a
treatment for COVID-19 but said there had been until now "an
absence of reliable information from large randomised trials".
He said the preliminary results from RECOVERY, which was a
randomised trial, were now quite clear: hydroxychloroquine does
not reduce the risk of death among hospitalised patients with
COVID-19.
"If you're admitted to hospital, don't take
hydroxychloroquine," he said.
The RECOVERY trial of hydroxychloroquine had randomly
assigned 1,542 COVID-19 patients to hydroxychloroquine and
compared them with 3,132 COVID-19 patients randomly assigned to
standard care without the drug.
Results showed no significant difference in death rates
after 28 days, in length of stay in hospital or in other
outcomes, the researchers said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday it
would resume tests of hydroxychloroquine as part of its
'Solidarity' trials, after those running the study briefly
stopped giving it to new patients in light of the Lancet paper.
Peter Horby, an Oxford University professor who is
co-leading the RECOVERY trial with Landray, said his team had
informed the WHO of their decision to halt the UK study.
"There was a call this morning with the WHO to give them a
heads-up on the results... They... said they would be convening
their committee to look again at their decision regarding the
Solidarity trial."
(Reporting by Kate Kelland and Alistair Smout; Editing by
Gareth Jones)