Efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in patients with COVID-19:

Chen Z., Hu J., Zhang Z., Jiang S., Han S., Yan D., Zhuang R., and Zhang Z. (2020). 

Efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in patients with COVID-19: results of a randomized

clinical trial. medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758

1. Who conducted/assisted the current study?

2. What is (are) the source(s) of study funding, if any?

3. What is the research strategy used by Chen et al. (2020 (i.e., experiment, survey, field research, or use of existing data)?

4. What type of study is conducted? (e.g., Exploratory, Explanatory, Descriptive)

5. What is the motivating research question (if not explicitly stated, please state it)?

6. What are the independent and dependent variables?

7. What is the most general research hypothesis for the primary outcome?

8. State the most general null hypothesis for the primary outcome?

9. What type of sample is employed in the study? Briefly, describe the sample(s). What is the recruitment strategy? Is the sample strong on external validity?

10. How are data collected? Please provide a descriptive summary.

11. Is the study strong on internal validity, why or why not? Are two or more groups comparable on measured potential confounders?

12. How were the ethical concerns dealt with in the current study?

13. What are the results?

14. What are the study’s limitations, if any?