What Exactly Is Hydroxychloroquine, The Drug That Is Being Tested As The First Potential Coronavirus Treatment
March 19, 2020
During a press conference earlier today, March 19th, the Trump administration announced that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, among other drugs, are being approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test as potential COVID-19 coronavirus treatments. This is not the first time these drugs have been mentionedas potential treatments for the viral illness: early testing of hydroxychloroquine in France showed promising results, with results indicating that 50% of patients that originally tested positive for the virus tested negative after just three days of treatment. However, though the results are still extremely unclear whether this is a viable solution, it may be critical to understand what this drug exactly is, and what is known about it already….(See link for article)
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**Comment**
If you are a Lyme/MSIDS patient you are probably well aware of the drug Plaquenil. You might even have taken it – I have.
Initially approved for malaria (although to this day they don’t know how it works), it has become a “go to” drug for Lyme literate doctors treating Lyme/MSIDS due to its ability to inactivate the body’s immune response which decreases inflammation.
According to this press release https://med.umn.edu/news-events/covid-19-clinical-trial-launches-university-minnesota, the University of Minnesota is conducting a post-exposure treatment clinical trial for plaquenil for coronavirus COVID-19 disease.
Study parameters:
To be eligible, one must live with someone who has diagnosed coronavirus COVID-19 or be a healthcare worker with a high-risk exposure within the past three days. The research study medicine will be delivered to their home overnight. If you think you may be eligible to participate in the trial, please email covid19@umn.edu for further instructions.
This article explains the difference between chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85552 The author points out that the two drugs are related and both used for malaria, but that hydroxychloroquine, is the stronger of the two.
Dr. Vick points out that chloroquine (Aralen) is contraindicated in people who have glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiencywhich is found predominantly in males of African or Mediterranean origin and is evidently fairly common. The usage of Chloroquine is associated with hemolytic anemia in those with G6PD deficiency.
Hydroxychloroquine (plaquenil), on the other hand, does not induce hemolytic anemia in people with G6PD deficiency despite the molecular similarity to chloroquine. It has shown effectiveness in inhibiting the pandemic coronavirus during in vitro testing.
