Potential Adverse Drug Reactions of Chloroquine in the Treatment of COVID-19

Since December 2019, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has broken out in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Due to the highly pathogenic and infectious characteristics, COVID-19 spread across China and later globally and became a severe pandemic. To date, there have been no efficacious specialized drugs to treat COVID-19. The China-issued Diagnosis and Treatment of Pneumonia Caused by Novel Coronavirus (Trial version 6) added the chloroquine phosphate to the antiviral treatment protocol for infected adults.

In this review, government documents and authoritative guidelines on COVID-19 were collected from the official website of organizations related to health and medicine. Research articles related to chloroquine and its application for COVID-19 treatment were searched and acquired from the PubMed platform. Facts and data related to the use of chloroquine were summarized in several parts.

 Recently, there has been an increase in research on the use of chloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19. This drug is utilized as an antimalarial and antiviral medication. There are some concerns and cautions on the clinical application of chloroquine, about which clinicians should be informed during this global pandemic. The present review summarized data on the mechanism of action, drug-drug interaction (DDI), and adverse drug reaction (ADR) of chloroquine and pharmaceutical care for special patients in order to provide a reference for the rational use of this drug in COVID-19 patients.

 Currently, there is mixed evidence on the efficacy of chloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19. Potential DDIs and ADRs, as well as pharmaceutical care, for special patients should be considered in fighting against the pandemic.