key: cord-0847625-8f36lri7
authors: Gautret, Philippe; Hoang, Van Thuan; Lagier, Jean-Christophe; Raoult, Didier
title: Response to advances statistical methods and designs for clinical trials for COVID-19
date: 2021-01-04
journal: Int J Antimicrob Agents
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.106235
sha: 3716c3addcc46d1a2c5063efb81711844c7cf167
doc_id: 847625
cord_uid: 8f36lri7

nan

We agree with colleagues that the use of the chi-squared and one-sided Fisher tests to compare PCR-negative rates in our study were possibly not the best appropriate tests, given the small sample sizes [1] . The proposed alternative tests (Barnard and Wang tests) give a much higher statistical power. Interestingly, these tests confirmed the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). We also agree that excluding six patients from our analysis may have biased the results. For that reason, we reanalyzed our data on the 42 patients initially enrolled in our survey, including those transferred to intensive care unit. The p-value was calculated using Barnard exact unconditional test and confidence intervals (95%CI) were estimated using the Wang exact 95% one-sided lower limit, as proposed. Statistical analysis was conducted using R [R Core Team. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria, 2020. URL: https://www.Rproject.org/ ]. Table 1 shows our updated results. The positive 95% CI confirmed the effectiveness of HCQ as did the Barnard test and it concluded that the use of HCQ increased the PCR-negative rate by at least 50.6% with 95% confidence.

No funding sources.

Not applicable. 

The authors declare no competing interests.

Referring to the study: Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID-19: results of an open label non-randomized clinical trial

Didier Raoult * IHU-Méditerranée Infection