Excitement around hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 causes challenges for rheumatology
Brian Owens
Published:April 01, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2665-9913(20)30089-8
Excitement about a potential new treatment for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic currently engulfing the world is causing problems for patients with arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), who routinely use the drug to control their symptoms.
The antimalarial drug chloroquine and its safer derivative hydroxychloroquine have been used since the 1940s to treat autoimmune disorders, says Thomas Dörner, a rheumatologist at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin. Though the drug is rarely used for rheumatoid arthritis, around two-thirds of patients with SLE in Europe use hydroxychloroquine to manage their symptoms, and it is the only known therapy so far for primary Sjögren's syndrome, he says.