Hydroxychloroquine for preexposure prophylaxis for SARS-CoV-2

https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.31.20185314

This is a retrospective cohort study. The exposed cohort was formed by individuals with autoimmune diseases with HCQ treatment. The control cohort was randomly selected using the Health Card database. To deal with confounding variables and evaluate the effect of HCQ on the incidence and severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection, propensity score matching was used. Risk difference and paired percentage difference between exposed and non-exposed groups was estimated. 919 individuals formed the exposed cohort and 1351 the control cohort. After matching, there were 690 patients on each group. During the time of the study, in the exposed group there were 42 (6.1%) individuals with suspected COVID-19, 12(1.7%) with confirmed COVID-19 and 3(0.4%) were hospitalized. In the control group there were 30(4.3%) individuals with suspected COVID-19, 13(1.9%) with confirmed COVID-19 and 2(0.3%) were hospitalized. The risk difference between each cohort was: 0.017(-0.05-0.04) for suspected COVID-19; -0.014(-0.015-0.012) for confirmed COVID-19 and 0.001(-0.007-0.007) for hospitalized patients. There were not significant differences. Conclusion: there is no difference neither on the incidence nor on the severity of COVID-19 between patients with autoimmune diseases with HCQ treatment and patients that do not take HCQ.

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