Hydroxychloroquine and mortality in COVID-19 patients: a systematic review and a meta-analysis of observational studies and randomized controlled trials

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Abstract

No abstract available

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.01.20223958: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Institutional review board approval was not required as the study did not directly involve human participants.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    This study was conducted according to the recommendations outlined in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of
    Cochrane Handbook
    suggested: None
    Articles published in English were retrieved from inception to October 20th, 2020 by searching in Medline, Embase, PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Central Database, MedRvix and Preprints.org, with the search terms: “(COVID-19 OR Cov-Sars-2)
    Medline
    suggested: (MEDLINE, RRID:SCR_002185)
    Embase
    suggested: (EMBASE, RRID:SCR_001650)
    PubMed
    suggested: (PubMed, RRID:SCR_004846)
    All analyses were performed using standard statistical procedures provided in RevMan5.1 (The Cochrane Collaboration, Oxford, United Kingdom).
    Cochrane Collaboration
    suggested: None

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    As major limitations, we recognised that majority of the primary studies were observational, the pooled findings suffer of a high degree of heterogeneity and that results in observational and RCT studies were different. Conclusion: In conclusion, HCQ was not associated with increased or decreased mortality in COVID-19 patients when only RCTs were pooled, but it was associated with 8% to 35% reduced mortality when observational studies were also included. The association was mainly apparent by pooling studies using lower doses of HCQ. Use of HCQ was not associated with severe adverse events. These results should be considered with caution, because the majority of the studies included were observational and retrospective and the possibility of confounding could not be fully excluded. However, at present, this is the largest comprehensive quantitative overview on the association of HCQ with mortality in COVID-19 patients, and our findings underscoring HCQ dosage effects can help disentangling the debate on HCQ use and encourage the planning of RCTs using low doses of HCQ in hospitalised COVID-19 patients.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.