Four-and-a-half years after its publishing date, ScienceDirect retracted a study that examined whether hydroxychloroquine could be a potential treatment for COVID-19.
The research was published in March 2020, when the term "pandemic" entered everyday use. The France-based study examined 36 COVID-19 patients, 20 of which received hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.
After three of the 18 study authors raised validity concerns about the results, ScienceDirect withdrew the article Dec. 17. The journal said it could not confirm whether these patients were fully informed of their treatment regimen.
The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine are other prominent health journals that have withdrawn studies that touted hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment.
Amid the early chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, prescriptions for the medication soared 59% in March and April 2020, according to the CDC. By mid-2020, the FDA revoked its emergency use authorization for malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment due to lacking scientific evidence.
The damage was already done.
Telehealth companies earned millions of dollars from selling the unproven COVID-19 treatment, patients threatened healthcare workers who would not provide hydroxychloroquine and health systems fired physicians who prescribed the medication for COVID-19.
In response to ScienceDirect's retraction, the French Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics said: "The promotion of the results led to the abusive prescription of hydroxychloroquine to millions of patients, leading to unwarranted risks to millions of people and potentially thousands of avoidable deaths. The promotion of the study also [led] to the proliferation of useless studies, to the detriment of research on effective treatments."