Study Addresses Effectiveness of HCQ on Healthcare Providers
The University of Michigan was selected to participate in the first study to use the new national HERO registry. Led locally by Marisa Miceli, MD, and Peter Higgins, MD, PhD, MSc, this study focuses on how effective Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) may be in protecting healthcare providers.
“The multi-site study will be large enough to definitively address questions such as ‘Can HCQ prevent COVID infections in Health Care Providers (HCP)? Or “Can HCQ reduce the severity of COVID infections in HCP?” said David Williams, PhD, Professor of Anesthesiology, and faculty lead of MICHR’s new Network-Based Research Unit (NBRU).
In supporting this first study, MICHR is facilitating rapid regulatory approval, contracting, and budgets, with the help of the Ambulatory and Chronic Disease Clinical Trial Support Unit.
“This provider prevention study, with 15,000 healthcare providers nationwide, randomizes health care providers to HCQ vs placebo,” said Peter Higgins, MD, PhD, MSc(CRDSA), Professor, Division of Gastroenterology; Director, IBD Program; and Director, Ambulatory and Chronic Disease Clinical Trial Support Unit, Department of Internal Medicine. “We intend to identify whether HCQ can reduce infections in health care providers at high risk and reduce the severity of COVID-19 infections.”
Marisa Haydee Miceli, MD, Associate Professor, Infectious Diseases, Internal Medicine, will be doing 1,000+ nasal swabs, with back up from ID colleagues when she is doing clinical service, as part of the study.
ABOUT HERO
The Healthcare Worker Exposure Response & Outcomes (HERO) registry is asking hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals to sign up. Developed by the national Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet), the HERO registry engages a community of healthcare workers on the front lines fighting the COVID-19 infection.
Michigan Medicine healthcare workers who want to help others understand the impact COVID-19 is having on them are signing up for this and other multi-site research studies, via the new HERO registry, with assistance from MICHR’s NBRU.
The HERO registry is open to all healthcare workers, including nurses, therapists, physicians, emergency responders, food service workers, environmental service workers, interpreters, transporters – anyone who works in a setting where people receive health care for COVID-19. Learn more and join here.
ABOUT NBRU
The NBRU is a singular unit within MICHR that facilitates health-related network-based research for the University of Michigan. The unit assists investigators, industry, and patient communities, in linking to and designing studies that utilize large-scale research consortia. NBRU serves as a liaison between U-M investigators and the Trial Innovation Network (TIN), the Midwest Area Research Consortium for Health (MARCH), Accrual to Clinical Trials (ACT), and PaTH Network. TIN, ACT, and MARCH are each part of the CTSA collaboration, while PaTH Network is part of PCORnet. Learn about how each of these networks may enhance your research at MICHR’s NBRU webpage.