Lane et al., The Lancet Rheumatology,
doi:10.1016/S2665-9913(20)30276-9 (Peer Reviewed)
Risk of hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: a multinational, retrospective study
Retrospective study of RA patients using HCQ vs. sulfasalazine (another DMARD). HCQ treatment showed no increased risk in the short term (up to 30 days) among patients with RA. Long term use was associated with excess cardiovascular mortality.
Addition of AZ increased the risk of cardiovascular mortality with combined use up to 30 days. This is several times longer than typical COVID-19 use. This result also comes from just 2 of the 14 databases, with the negative result from just one database (VA) and much lower statistically insignifant difference in mortality from the other database (Clinformatics).
Confounding by indication. Patients conditions vary, the severity of a patient's RA or other conditions was not taken into account. Results varied widely across different databases, and different subsets of databases were used in different analyses. Baseline risk of serious adverse events unknown. Health care database analysis subject to misclassification errors.
Lane et al., 8/21/2020, peer-reviewed, 62 authors.