>>8853430
>>8853460
>>8853387
Going to need to study this in depth alone.
The retinopathy could be with longer term use, but show as an issue (with a 1-week covid treatment, muh retinas).
Introduction
Chloroquine (CQ) is used to prevent and treat malaria and amebiasis,[1] while hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a less toxic metabolite of chloroquine, is used to treat rheumatic diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and Sjogren's syndrome.[2] Both medications can cause corneal deposits, posterior subcapsular lens opacity, ciliary body dysfunction, and most important, irregularity in the macular pigmentation in the early phase, a ring of macular pigment dropout in the advanced stage, and peripheral bone spicule formation, vascular attenuation, and optic disc pallor in the end-stage. Ocular symptoms of retinopathy include blurred and partial loss of central vision, side vision and in the later stage, night vision. Symptoms of corneal deposits include haloes and glare. Clinical research has resulted in precise screening protocols and safe dosing guidelines to prevent ocular toxicity and detect retinal damage at an early stage.
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Etiology
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine bind to melanin in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and cause damage to the macular cones outside of the fovea. The drugs inhibit RPE lysosome activity, reduce phagocytosis of shed photoreceptor outer segments causing an accumulation of outer receptor segments. In response, pigment-containing RPE cells migrate into the outer nuclear and outer plexiform layers of the retina resulting in irreversible photoreceptor loss and RPE atrophy.[3] HCQ has a long half-life (about one month) and takes about half a year to achieve full elimination from the body; this is significant when managing minor side effects such as itching and corneal deposits and major ones such as retinal toxicity and explains continued maculopathy even after discontinuation of the medication. Corneal deposits (called vortex keratopathy or corneal verticillata) result from binding to cellular lipids and deposition of the drug in the basal epithelial layer of the cornea. Discontinuation of the drug usually causes the deposits to disappear over time.
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Epidemiology
The advance of spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and multifocal electroretinography (mf-ERG) technology has allowed for better detection of retinopathy.[4] These advances, combined with the increased clinical availability of SD-OCT and, to a lesser degree mf-ERG, has increased reported incidence and prevalence of toxicity over the last decade.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537086/
The same study revealed that the most important predictor of toxicity was the duration of use (cumulative dose) and that age, the daily dose, and patient weight did not correlate significantly with HCQ toxicity. One reaches a cumulative dose of 1000 grams (1 kilogram) at 7 years when taking the most commonly prescribed dose of 400 mg a day. A new study then focused on those patients that had taken HCQ over 5 years. This study revealed a much higher overall risk of 7.5% retinal toxicity among the 2361 patients studied.[7] A daily dose over 5 mg/kg body weight increased the odds 5.7 times and taking HCQ over 10 years increased the odds by 3.2 times of developing retinopathy.
Those dosages are in the range being discussed for a 3-5 days cure. Not years.
Much more to worry about with DMT in the retinas more likely (can even produce 'tearing' after a very nice trip).
Have started speaking with frens/fam about HCQ. One member took for malaria, with success, but was on tail end of malaria treatment (so suggested that feeling were more from the drug than malaria). Said "It was heavy, wouldn't want to go to work on the day taking the drug, but not too bad.).