‘Is it effective?’ KU Med needs health care workers to try taking coronavirus drug
The University of Kansas Medical Center is looking for 500 area health care workers to participate in a nationwide clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine, a drug some say could prevent and treat COVID-19.
The drug, sold by the brand name Plaquenil, is considered the most important drug for lupus patients and is also used for rheumatoid arthritis and malaria prevention.
It grabbed headlines and attention by President Donald Trump after a French study touted its effectiveness for treating coronavirus patients when paired with the antibiotic azithromycin. There were problems with that study, however, and the antibiotic is no longer being used.
But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients, and doctors nationwide are reporting mixed results.
“We need to know is this medication safe, first, for health care workers, because there are side effects with every medication we’ve been throwing at our patients,” KU pulmonologist Mario Castro said Monday during a media briefing.
“And we also need to know is it effective? Can it prevent COVID infections in our health care workers?”
This new nationwide trial, which begins April 22, is led by the Duke Clinical Research Institute and will take place at 60 sites across the country, including KU Medical Center and the University of Missouri, according to Duke.
Castro will be the principal investigator at the KU site. He is vice chair for clinical and translational research at the University of Kansas School of Medicine.
The “Hero” study takes its name from the new Healthcare Worker Exposure Response & Outcomes (HERO) registry, which is signing up health care workers across the United States willing to share with scientists their work and home life experiences as they confront the pandemic.
The registry is open “to all healthcare workers, including nurses, therapists, physicians, emergency responders, food service workers, environmental service workers, interpreters, transporters — anyone who works in a setting where people receive health care,” the Hero website says.
The hydroxychloroquine trial is the first they can participate in. The goal is to get 15,000 participants nationwide. Health care workers can sign up at heroesresearch.org.
Half the participants will take hydroxychloroquine, and the other half will get a placebo, Castro said.
The study “is trying to save our health care workers,” Castro said. “It’s trying to come up with a strategy perhaps that will help us in terms of our health care workers that are being exposed to COVID.”
Castro said that 20% to 30% of health care workers in the hot spots of New York City and Seattle have been infected. “One out of five, one out of four chances, not very good for a health care worker,” said Castro.
He said the hydroxychloroquine study is one of more than 40 clinical trials being considered as the KU health system searches for different approaches to treating the new coronavirus.
COVID-19 patients across the country are being treated with hydroxychloroquine and “some of us have seen small improvements, but not dramatic improvements,” said Castro.
“We know supportive care, helping people with breathing, oxygen …” he said. “But we’ve been using a lot of other medications. … We’re really just in the experimental stage, I would say. And it’s not the way we like to practice medicine. We like to know what’s the evidence behind it.
“I almost argue that every patient … should be in a study because we should be learning from every patient and what they can teach us.”
As of Monday the KU hospital has 31 COVID-19 patients, half in intensive care, which is “not good if that’s taking a trend toward more critically ill patients,” Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infectious prevention and control for the KU health system, said at Monday’s media briefing.
This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 1:58 PM.
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