New Delhi: In the wake of fast spread of coronavirus cases, groups of doctors have questioned ICMR’s study on the methodology of hydroxychloroquine or HCQ can help lower the risk of contracting Covid-19 among healthcare workers.
The questions were raised by two groups of doctors from AIIMS, Raipur, and AIIMS, New Delhi.
In March, the Indian Council of Medical Research had issued an advisory to begin using HCQ but it had drawn criticism for lacking scientific evidence that the drug works against the COVID-19.
At the time, there were no studies showing that the anti-malarial drug can prevent Covid-19.
Subsequently in May, the ICMR had announced that consuming hydroxychloroquine reduces the chances of getting infected with Coronavirus.
It then released an advisory recommending the expansion of the usage of HCQ as a preventive treatment against the novel coronavirus.
The study was published on 20 June.
But now, in a correspondence published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research (IJMR) last Saturday, AIIMS, Raipur, doctors Habib M.R. Karim and Ghazal Ahmed have questioned the methodology of the study.
“The authors include only symptomatic healthcare workers (HCWs) who were tested positive or negative in cases and controls. As a good number of individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection are asymptomatic, the inclusion of only symptomatic HCWs is unlikely to represent the entire HCWs taking and/or not taking HCQ as prophylaxis,” they wrote.
They also argued that the findings should have also been analysed with respect to the work environment and procedures — that is, whether healthcare workers in the intensive care units caring for confirmed patients and carrying out procedures put them at higher risk of infection than health workers in general, who are equally protected from Covid-19 with HCQ.
They argue that such data should have been presented for better acceptance of the results.
In its response published in the same journal, authors of the ICMR study, including epidemiologist Raman Gangakhedar and director-general of the apex research body Balram Bhargava, defended the study design, saying that sticking only to symptomatic participants in the study helped ‘reduce biases’. They, however, did not elaborate on this.
They also added the evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are awaited to support further actions pertaining to the use of HCQ.
