Devyani Goswami, Amity University Kolkata
Right after in the early months of the pandemic the US government has asked for a huge supply of hydroxychloroquine from the Indian government as the primary drug to be used in the treatment of SARS-CoV-19. Though after a few months both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine were considered to be an ineffective rather harmful drug for treating COVID-19 patients.
For the past 70 years, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have been used as the primary drug for treating non-resistant malaria, SLE, RA. France and China have conducted studies where it proved that Covid-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine had 100% improvement and were declared disease-free. But later studies from the US stated that both of these drugs have adverse effects on patients suffering from Cardiac disease, SLE, and RA.
The study was conducted with all the published articles on cardiac disease, hydroxychloroquine, and chloroquine in the past 20 years (2000-2020). 702,274 reports were obtained from the FDA FAERS database and after a thorough analysis of these databases, the final report was created.
Patients with cardiac diseases have higher chances of facing adverse effects on treatment with hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. Although the level of adversity for hydroxychloroquine is lower than chloroquine, it remains somewhere equal. Age, sex, weight, disease stage, NSAID, Aspirin were also the major factors, chloroquine had co-administration on these factors. SLE patients have more risk than RA patients on the administration of these drugs. It was also observed that usage of Aspirin along with these drugs had positive effects but certain reports for negative effects were also observed.
Till the discovery of a perfect vaccination again SARS-CoV-19, treatment of the patients with a certain known drug is the ultimate step. But to be sure the effects of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine should not be trusted blindly.
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REFERENCE: Cardiac adverse events associated with Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine exposer in 20 years of drug safety surveillance reports – Issac V. Cohen et al. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76258-0
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