France stops hydroxychloroquine used to treat coronavirus amid cardiac side effects

A French hospital selected as part of a trial to test some coronavirus treatments, has stopped using hydroxychloroquine due to adverse cardiac effects.

Professor Émile Ferrari, the head of the cardiology department at Nice University Hospital in Nice in France, told a local news outlet – Nice-Matin – he has had to stop treating patients with the hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin due to cardiac side effects.

Ferrari said one patient experienced a serious complication and that the treatment was stopped immediately.

The cardiologist reiterated warnings made by health experts about the drug combination, saying that the drugs can trigger arrhythmia, which can lead to a fatal heart attack in some patients, especially those who have heart conditions or are on certain medications.

Although covid-19 can kill, the treatment should not be more harmful than the disease, Ferrari added.

In the U.S., doctors have recommended screening patients with an electrocardiogram so that the drugs would not be given to the 1 percent of patients at greatest risk of a cardiac event, The Washington Post has reported.

With the long-term use, the drugs can also cause vision loss called retinopathy, and chloroquine has been associated with psychosis, according to The Washington Post added.

So far, there is no clear evidence that the drugs work to treat the coronavirus, though their antiviral properties have been tested in labs. Rigorous clinical trials that test the drugs in humans against placebos have not been completed.