Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine: what are they?
Do they help in prophylaxis against COVID-19?
Why is Trump assuming this drug?! 
By Syrtico KM. – May 19, 2020
The news today is that Trump has been assuming a “hydroxy-something” pill every day for over a week !!
It is a preventive choice not to cure the coronavirus of which it seems to be unaffected.
In this period in which Covid-19 looms frighteningly over us have we heard of chloroquine but hydroxychloroquine?
Let’s investigate these drugs a bit. I’m going to work on the web. I find a world!
I collect the most useful information about these two medicines.
Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is an authorized drug for the treatment of malaria and certain autoimmune diseases such as SLE, i.e. systemic lupus erythematosus, to reduce the skin problems associated with it, as well as to treat or prevent swelling and pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis. It is a drug also used to treat certain infections such as Q fever and endocarditis.
Chloroquine (CQ) is used to kill malaria parasites in red blood cells.
In short, both are generally used for the treatment or prevention of malaria.
Patients who took these drugs confirmed several common side effects.
Nausea, headache and loss of appetite when taking hydroxychloroquine. Nausea, vomiting and blurred vision are the side effects highlighted in the case of use of chloroquine.
A retrospective observational study of a population with rheumatological pathology seems to demonstrate that, in the long term, HCQ is more tolerable than chloroquine.
For both drugs, major side effects such as heart failure, muscle weakness and ringing in the ears have been reported.
But why use these drugs to prevent or treat coronavirus ???
European Medicines Agency (EMA) on April 1, 2020 published that :
“Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, two medicines currently authorised for malaria and certain autoimmune diseases, are being investigated worldwide for their potential to treat coronavirus disease (COVID-19). However, efficacy in treating COVID-19 is yet to be shown in studies.
It is very important that patients and healthcare professionals only use chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for their authorised uses or as part of clinical trials or national emergency use programmes for the treatment of COVID-19.
Both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine can have serious side effects, especially at high doses or when combined with other medicines. They must not be used without a prescription and without supervision by a doctor; prescriptions should not be given outside their authorised uses except in the setting of a clinical trial or nationally agreed protocols.”
It is clear that the real effectiveness of the 2 drugs for the treatment of coronavirus infection has not yet been demonstrated!
It is also confirmed that both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can have serious side effects, especially at high doses or in combination with other drugs.
So we ask ourselves, if President Trump tests negative for the detection of COVID-19, then why take a pill of a drug daily whose efficacy for prophylaxis against coronavirus has been excluded by experts and whose side effects, particularly for the heart, are not at all trivial?
That Trump has started do-it-yourself therapy, with or without the approval of his doctor, but still with his support to obtain the drug, and now he is rising to a doctor’s dispensing therapeutic indications to the world?
Certainly this announcement can be interpreted as the umpteenth act of defiance by the US president against scientists and doctors …
