Background:Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a major global issue with rising the number of infected individuals and mortality in recent months. Among all therapeutic approaches, arguments have raised about hydroxychloroquine efficacy in treatment of COVID-19. We aimed to overcome the controversies regarding effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treatment of COVID-19, using a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Methods:A systematic search was performed in PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Google Scholar and medRxiv pre-print database using all available MeSH terms for COVID-19 and hydroxychloroquine. Two authors selected and assessed the quality of studies independently using related checklists. Data have been extracted from included studies and analyzed using CMA v. 2.2.064. heterogeneity was also assessed using I-squared test.
Results:Seven studies including four clinical trials and three observational studies have entered into the study. The results of meta-analysis of clinical trials showed that there were no significant differences between patients who received the standard treatment with HCQ regimen and the patients that received the standard treatment without HCQ (RR: 1.44, 95% CI, 0.80-2.59). CT-Scan findings improved in 59% (95% CI 0.15-0.92) and nasopharyngeal culture following RT-PCR resulted negative in 76% (95% CI 0.56-0.89) of patients received hydroxychloroquine. Metaanalysis of observational studies showed 75% (95% CI, 0.54-0.88) of patients were discharged from the hospital, 34% (95% CI, 0.07-0.14) admitted to intensive care unit and 1.5% (95% CI, 0.03-0.83) have expired.
Conclusion:This study indicated no clinical benefits regarding HCQ for treatment of COVID-19 patients. However, further large clinical trials should be taken into account in order to achieve more reliable findings.