ABOVE: 875 N Michigan Avenue, Chicago—the address on Surgisphere Corporation’s website
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Surgisphere Corporation, the company that supplied data for a controversial study on the health risks of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients published in The Lancet last week (May 22), has found itself in the spotlight after researchers raised questions about the dataset.
The Lancet study, which lists Surgisphere founder and CEO Sapan Desai as one of four coauthors, reported harmful effects tied to the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine among patients with COVID-19. In response to the findings, the World Health Organization (WHO) and several other health organizations stopped or suspended clinical trials of the drug while they look more closely into the compound’s safety.
The database used for the Lancet study, which the paper states includes 96,032 patients from 671 hospitals across six continents, is accessible only by Surgisphere. But in the week since the paper’s publication, concerns about ...
