RESEARCHERS conducting clinical trials into a potential coronavirus treatment touted by the US president have found it has no clinical benefit.

Donald Trump was widely criticised for promoting hydroxychloroquine as a cure for the virus, despite research not supporting its use to treat Covid-19 and warnings it could be unsafe.

Clinical trials were set to start last month to determine if the anti-malarial drug could prevent coronavirus.

The tests, part of an investigation led by the Bangkok-based Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), were open to frontline health workers in Brighton and Oxford.

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The study involved a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial that will enrol more than 40,000 people who work with confirmed or suspected coronavirus patients from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America, MORU co-principal investigator Professor Sir Nicholas White said in a statement.

But the part of the trial examining hydroxychloroquine has now been ended after no clinical benefits were found.

Professor Peter Horby and Professor Martin Landray, chief investigators of the university’s Recovery trials, said on Friday that the drug showed no benefit for patients being treated in hospital with the virus.

The Oxford trial, which includes more than 11,000 people, involves a number of medications that are licensed for use in other conditions, including hydroxychloroquine.

However, after reviewing the data on Thursday evening, Prof Landray, deputy chief investigator of the trial, said: “We have concluded that there is no beneficial effect of hydroxychloroquine in patients hospitalised with Covid-19.

“We have therefore decided to stop enrolling participants to the hydroxychloroquine arm of the recovery trial with immediate effect.”

A total of 1,542 people were involved in the hydroxychloroquine part of the trial and researchers found that 25.7 per cent of patients who were in the hydroxychloroquine arm died after 28 days, compared with 23.5 per cent of people with standard care alone.

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The trial also found there was no benefit on the length of a person’s hospital stay or any other outcomes.

Prof Landray told reporters: “If you’re admitted to hospital with Covid, you, your mother, your friend, or anybody else, hydroxychloroquine is not the right treatment, it doesn’t work.”

It is currently not known how many people are currently using hydroxychloroquine after it was promoted by US President Donald Trump as a cure.

Prof Horby, chief investigator and professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health in the Nuffield Department of Medicine, said: “I think this is an excellent example of where you shouldn’t roll out unproven treatments or unproven preventative drugs without really robust evidence that they work.

“I think these drugs and any other drugs should really be used in clinical trials only in clinical trials and only used any wider than that once you have the very clear results.”

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