Kansas GOP Rep., who is also a doctor, says he's 'relieved' Trump is taking hydroxy and reveals he and his wife, siblings and parents are all using it as COVID-19 prevention, despite FDA warning against it

A Republican congressman from Kansas who is also an OB-GYN doctor says he has been taking a malaria drug being touted by President Donald Trump as a way to protect against the coronavirus, despite warnings that it could have potentially fatal side effects.

U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall, who is running for the U.S. Senate, said he doesn't have COVID-19 but is taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative drug. His parents, siblings and wife also are taking the drug, a spokesman for Marshall told The Kansas City Star on Tuesday.

'I would encourage any person over the age of 65 or with an underlying medical condition to talk to their own physician about taking hydroxychloroquine and I'm relieved President Trump is taking it,' Marshall told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the congressman's use of the drug.

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Rep. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, who is also a doctor, says he is taking hydroxychloroquine that President Donald Trump has touted as a treatment for the coronavirus, adding he doesn't have COVID-19 but he's been taking the malaria drug to hold off the virus. He's pictured March 2017

Trump said Monday that he has been taking the drug and a zinc supplement for more than a week. 

Trump's revelation caught many in his administration by surprise and set off an urgent effort by officials to justify his action. 

But their attempt to address the concerns of health professionals was undercut by the president himself. He asserted without evidence that a study raising alarm about the drug was an 'enemy statement,' even as his own government warned that the drug should be administered for COVID-19 only in a hospital or research setting.

Trump decided to take hydroxychloroquine after two White House staffers tested positive for the disease, but he already had spent months promoting the drug as a potential cure or preventive despite the cautionary advice of many of his administration´s top medical professionals. 

'This is an individual decision to make,' Trump told reporters during a visit to Capitol Hill Tuesday to huddle with Senate Republicans. 'But it's had a great reputation.' 

The drug has the potential to cause significant side effects in some patients and has not been shown to combat the virus. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month warned doctors not to prescribe hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus outside of hospitals or research settings because of reports of serious side effects, including irregular heart rhythms and death among patients. 

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Trump said Tuesday that taking the anti-malaria drug 'is an individual decision to make. But it's had a great reputation'

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Marshall previously said previously that 'in many cases, patients have a lot to gain and little to lose if they consider taking it'

Preliminary results from a study done on coronavirus patients at U.S. veterans hospitals showed no benefit, casting more doubt on the drug´s efficacy during the pandemic.

Two large observational studies, each involving around 1,400 patients in New York, recently found no COVID benefit from hydroxychloroquine. Two new ones published Thursday in the medical journal BMJ reached the same conclusion. 

Marshall, though, has defended the use of the drug, saying previously that 'in many cases, patients have a lot to gain and little to lose if they consider taking it.' 

Regulators issued the alert, in part, based on increased reports of dangerous side effects called in to U.S. poison control centers.

Calls to centers involving hydroxychloroquine increased last month to 96, compared with 49 in April 2019, according to data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers provided to the AP. It was the second month of elevated reports involving the drug, following 79 calls in March. The problems reported included abnormal heart rhythms, seizures, nausea and vomiting. 

Trump dismissed reports of side effects, saying, 'All I can tell you is, so far I seem to be OK.' 

Trump alleged without evidence Tuesday that one government study that showed negative effects from the drug was meant to embarrass him.

'If you look at the one survey, the only bad survey, they were giving it to people that were in very bad shape,' Trump said. That was an apparent reference to a study of hundreds of patients treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in which more people in a group who were administered hydroxychloroquine died than among those who weren't.

'They were very old. Almost dead,' Trump said. 'It was a Trump enemy statement.' 

Many studies are testing hydroxychloroquine for preventing or limiting coronavirus illness but 'at this point in time there´s absolutely no evidence that this strategy works,' said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University in Atlanta.

'My concern is, the president has a big bully pulpit ... maybe people will think there´s some non-public evidence' that the drug works because Trump has chosen to use it, del Rio said. 'It creates this conspiracy theory that something works and they´re not telling me about it yet.'

Marshall is just one of the GOP candidates who have been stressing their loyalty to Trump. 

In the U.S. Senate race, Marshall is still struggling to consolidate opponents of his main rival, immigration hardliner and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Kobach was the first prominent Kansas elected official to endorse Trump in 2016. 

In a crowded GOP field, Marshall faces attacks from the right, with a political action committee for the small-government, free-market group Club for Growth planning to spend $2.2 million on anti-Marshall ads starting in mid-June.

Some Republicans also are watching the candidacy of Bob Hamilton, a former Kansas City-area plumbing business owner, who has been able to use personal funds to keep up with Marshall´s fundraising.