Coalition: Advocacy for Prospective Clinical Trials to Test the Post-Exposure Potential of Hydroxychloroquine Against COVID-19

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. Submitted by Claudete Fernandes (claudete.queiroz@icict.fiocruz.br) on 2020-04-19T01:13:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Picot_Stephane Picot_IOC_2020COVID19.pdf: 595821 bytes, checksum: e8b4e543dce4fea144da8063c42a328a (MD5) Approved for entry into archive by Claudete Fernandes (claudete.queiroz@icict.fiocruz.br) on 2020-04-19T01:34:27Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Picot_Stephane Picot_IOC_2020COVID19.pdf: 595821 bytes, checksum: e8b4e543dce4fea144da8063c42a328a (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2020-04-19T01:34:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Picot_Stephane Picot_IOC_2020COVID19.pdf: 595821 bytes, checksum: e8b4e543dce4fea144da8063c42a328a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2020 University Lyon. Malaria Research Unit. ICBMS. UMR 5246 CNRS INSA CPE. Lyon, France / Croix-Rousse Hospital. Hospices Civils de LyonInstitute of Parasitology and Medical Mycology. Lyon, France. Translational Medicine; HWCOM. FIU Health Travel Medicine Program and Vaccine Clinic Commander, Emergency Response Team Development. Miami, Florida, USA. University Lyon. Malaria Research Unit. ICBMS. UMR 5246 CNRS INSA CPE. Lyon, France / Groupement Hospitalier Nord, Service Pharmacie. Hospices Civils de Lyon. Lyon, France. Deputy Director. Division of Public Health Surveillance and Response National Institute for Communicable Diseases. Johannesburg, South-Africa. Faculté de Médecine Paris Descartes. Académie Vétérinaire de France. Paris, France. Institute of Research for Development (former), Montpellier Centre. Montpellier France. National Center for Global Health and Medicine. Department of Tropical Medicine and Malaria, Research Institute. Tokyo, Japan. The University of Queensland. School of Veterinary Science. Brisbane, Qld, Australia. Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Laboratório de Pesquisa em Malária. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. Universidad de Valencia. Facultad de Farmacia. Departamento de Parasitología. Valencia, Spain. Our coalition of public health experts, doctors, and scientists worldwide want to draw attention to the need for high-quality evaluation protocols of the potential beneficial effect of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as a post-exposure drug for exposed people, meaning people with close contact with positive tested patients, including home and medical caregivers. We have reviewed the mechanisms of antiviral effect of HCQ, the risk-benefit ratio taking into consideration the PK/PD of HCQ and the thresholds of efficacy. We have studied its use as an antimalarial, an antiviral, and an immunomodulating drug and concluded that the use of HCQ at does matching that of the standard treatment of Systemic Lupus erythematous, which has proven safety and efficacy in terms of HCQ blood and tissue concentration adapted to bodyweight (2,3), at 6 mg/kg/day 1 (loading dose) followed by 5 mg/kg/day, with a maximum limit of 600 mg/day in all cases should swiftly be clinically evaluated as a post-exposure drug for exposed people.