{"doi":"10.1101/2022.07.01.22277058","title":"Hydroxychloroquine pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent SARS-CoV-2 among health care workers at risk for SARS-CoV-2 exposure: A nonrandomized controlled trial","abstract":"Abstract Background Aerosol-generating procedures increase the risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection among health care workers (HCWs). An effective pre-exposure prophylaxis would mitigate this risk. Objective To determine the efficacy of pre-exposure prophylactic hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection and symptomatic coronavirus 19 disease (COVID-19) among HCWs at high occupational risk of SARS-CoV-2 exposure. Methods 130 HCWs in the New York University Langone Health System (NYULHS) who performed aerosol-generating procedures on patients with COVID-19 or provided bedside care for inpatients with COVID-19 or persons with suspected COVID-19 in an emergency department, for at least three shifts in a 7-day period, during the first 2020 COVID-19 wave in New York City were enrolled. Participants elected to take oral hydroxychloroquine, 600 mg on day 1 followed by 200 mg daily, or not take hydroxychloroquine for up to 90 days. Participants self-collected dried blood spots and completed digital questionnaires regarding COVID-19 symptoms, adverse events, and other COVID-19 medication use. Results Six participants (7.5%) seroconverted during the trial: four who took hydroxychloroquine (6.8%) and two who declined hydroxychloroquine (9.5%). All participants not taking hydroxychloroquine reported COVID-19 symptoms at seroconversion compared to one of four participants (25%) who took hydroxychloroquine. Adverse events occurred in eight participants (9.6%) on hydroxychloroquine and were mostly mild. Conclusions This study ( ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04354870 ) did not demonstrate a statistically significant difference in SARS-CoV-2 seroconversion associated with hydroxychloroquine pre-exposure prophylaxis among HCWs at high risk of occupational SARS-CoV-2 exposure, although was underpowered and a high rate of hydroxychloroquine discontinuation was observed.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2022,"id":309631,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9559,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1004902,"name":"Andrew Fleming","orcid":"0000-0002-8679-0044","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550603,"name":"Marie I. Samanovic","orcid":"0000-0002-6987-2232","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":383168,"name":"Lilin Lai","orcid":"0000-0002-9528-6990","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":492125,"name":"Hayley M. Belli","orcid":"0000-0002-0816-6844","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":3883,"name":"Mark J. Mulligan","orcid":"0000-0001-7262-9746","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":294580,"name":"H. Michael Belmont","orcid":"0000-0003-3389-2976","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":38207,"name":"Vanessa Raabe","orcid":"0000-0003-2579-1104","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":25,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:33:15.860993Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}