Trump, April 4: We’re just hearing really positive stories, and we’re continuing to collect the data. But I’ll just speak for myself: It’s been out for a long time. It’s a malaria drug. It’s also a drug for lupus. And there’s a — there’s a study out that people with lupus aren’t catching this horrible virus. They’re not — they’re not affected so much by it. Now, maybe that’s correct; maybe it’s false. You’re going to have to check it out.
The White House did not offer any support for the president’s claim that “people with lupus aren’t catching” the coronavirus. However, there is evidence from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance that he is wrong.
The international alliance was
formed to “help guide rheumatology clinicians in assessing and treating patients with rheumatologic disease.” The alliance — which is supported by the Lupus Foundation of America, Lupus Research Alliance and the American College of Rheumatology — has called on clinicians to report “all cases of COVID-19 in rheumatology patients, including those with mild or no symptoms.”
As of April 2, the group had information on
110 validated patients: 36% with rheumatoid arthritis, 17% with psoriatic arthritis and 17% with
systemic lupus erythematosus, or lupus, an autoimmune disease.
“One frequently asked question: over 25% of patients who developed a COVID-19 were on HCQ at the time of diagnosis,” the group said in a
tweet thread on April 2, referring to hydroxychloroquine.
“Based on early data currently available in our registry, we are not able to report any evidence of a protective effect from hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19,” the group said in an
April 4 tweet. To be clear, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one — but there aren’t signs so far, and ultimately, the question will have to be answered in a randomized controlled trial.
Although the data does show that lupus patients get COVID-19, Liew cautioned us that “there are many caveats to making further inference from registry data,” especially since “this is a voluntary registry and will not capture all patients living with rheumatic disease, such as lupus, who test positive for COVID-19.”
there dipshit