THE 500 YEARS STORY OF HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE AND ITS IMPLICATION ON OUR MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE: FROM MALARIA TO COVID-19

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26577/IAM.2020.v1.i2.01

Keywords:

Malaria, Quinine, hydroxychloroquine, COVID-19, pandemia

Abstract

Quinine is a famous class of drugs over the last 500 years of the history of medicine. It does not treat disease symptoms, but rather modifies the underlying mechanism of the disproportionate effect of inflammation and immunity. Thus, it is described under the rubric of DMARD (Disease-Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs). The mutation of SARS-CoV-1 to SARS-CoV-2  has given the virus the advantage  of bypassing many defenses, allowing the virus to spread widely, causing the current pandemic. During this progressive global crisis, the medical community began to repurpose many of the available drugs  to treat SARS-CoV-2  infection. Many antiviral drugs have been proposed. Using hydroxychloroquine   for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 has received significant attention in 2020. The idea of using hydroxychloroquine came from previous experience during the initial outbreak of MERS in 2012 when physicians and other scientists conducted random observations on various approved medication to identify potential treatment for HIV, ZIKA virus-infected Ebola infected patients and MERS infection. Despite earlier encouraging findings from in vitro and early observational studies, randomised clinical trials showed the opposite. Thus, a need to reflect our interpretation of all the scientific findings at differ stages and settings.

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Published

2020-12-20