Hospitals are seeing early success giving hydroxychloroquine to patients with COVID-19. Now, Henry Ford Health System wants to see if the drug can prevent the virus.
The health system and the city of Detroit are launching the first research trial in the nation in which healthy people are given hydroxychloroquine. It plans to enroll 3,000 first responders and health care workers from southeast Michigan in the eight-week trial.
The goal is to see if the drug can prevent or weaken COVID-19, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said.
“In Detroit, we don’t normally take things lying down. We fight back,” Duggan said. “If this study works out, we’ll save the lives of first responders around the world.”
Enrollment is voluntary for any first responders or health care workers in southeast Michigan who don’t have COVID-19 or related symptoms. The hope is to start signing people up by next Monday or Tuesday, study organizer and Henry Ford interventional cardiologist Dr. William W. O’Neill said.
Plans for the study started just 10 days ago, and it’s been fast-tracked through the Henry Ford Health System and FDA – and is close to FDA approval, O’Neill said.
Hydroxychloroquine has been used for 75 years, and is used to prevent and treat malaria and help patients with conditions like arthritis and lupus. The drug will come from a new shipment or from a reserve, O’Neill said, so it won’t affect the supply of the drug for people using it for non-COVID reasons.
Side effects include stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, and headache.
The FDA has approved emergency use of the drug, but the state of Michigan has warned against stockpiling it. Some Detroit hospitals, including Henry Ford and Beaumont, have been using it on COVID-19 patients.
Some of the 3,000 participants will get daily 200-milligram doses of the drug, some will get weekly doses and some will receive placebo sugar pills. It’s a double-blind, random trial, meaning neither the patients or researchers know who’s getting the actual drug.