What is the most serious side effect of hydroxychloroquine sulfate Plaquenil )?

Serious side effects

muscle weakness, cramps, stiffness or spasms, or changes in how your skin feels such as tingling. frequent infections with a high temperature, sore throat or mouth ulcers.

What are the serious side effects of Plaquenil?

What is the major toxic effect of hydroxychloroquine?

Its main side effects are gastrointestinal upset (vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps), skin rash, headache, dizziness, and ocular toxicity. However, serious side effects including arrhythmia, bronchospasm, angioedema, and seizures can rarely occur.

Is Plaquenil a high risk medication?

Using Plaquenil for a long period of time may harm the retina, causing serious vision loss. People with retinal damage from Plaquenil are not aware at first that they are losing vision. Unfortunately, once they lose a severe amount of vision loss, it is permanent.

What does Plaquenil do to your body?

How does Plaquenil work? Plaquenil changes the way your immune system works. In some kinds of lupus, your immune system attacks your body instead of protecting it. Plaquenil tries to quiet or slow down the immune system.

Hydroxychloroquine (DMARD) - Pharmacology, mechanism of action, indication, side effects

What is the downside of taking hydroxychloroquine?

Serious side effects

any eye problems, including changes in the colour of your eye or problems with your eyesight such as blurred vision, sensitivity to light or changes to the way you see colour. muscle weakness, cramps, stiffness or spasms, or changes in how your skin feels such as tingling.

What should I avoid while taking Plaquenil?

This medicine may cause blurred vision and may impair your reactions. Avoid driving or hazardous activity until you know how this medicine will affect you. Avoid taking an antacid or Kaopectate (kaolin-pectin) within 4 hours before or 4 hours after you take hydroxychloroquine.

How long should you stay on Plaquenil?

Also, you should keep taking this medicine while you are in the area and for 4 weeks after you leave the area. No medicine will protect you completely from malaria. However, to protect you as completely as possible, it is important to keep taking this medicine for the full time your doctor ordered.

Does Plaquenil affect your sleep?

Another is hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) which can sometimes make people nervous. If your RA is well controlled, you may still experience sleep problems due to other issues not related to your RA such as stress-inducing changes in work or relationships.

Does Plaquenil affect the brain?

Hydroxychloroquine can induce adverse effects on the central nervous system, from irritability, nervousness, and emotional changes to true psychoses.

What happens if you stop Plaquenil suddenly?

Your body doesn't become dependent on Plaquenil during treatment. So if you stop taking it, this won't cause withdrawal symptoms. If you take Plaquenil for lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, you may notice that stopping treatment makes your condition get worse.

How long does it take to get Plaquenil toxicity?

Plaquenil-induced toxicity usually will not occur before five years of taking the drug. “Eye damage due to Plaquenil is not common,” he says.

What is the black box warning for hydroxychloroquine?

Plaquenil has been shown to cause severe hypoglycemia including loss of consciousness that could be life threatening in patients treated with or without antidiabetic medications. — Patients treated with Plaquenil should be warned about the risk of hypoglycemia and the associated clinical signs and symptoms.

What happens if I stop taking Plaquenil for lupus?

The study found that a person who decreases her/his HCQ dose is 54% more likely to experience a flare sooner than someone who maintains the same dose. And, if someone stops taking the medication entirely, she/he is 61% more likely to have a flare sooner than someone who continues on HCQ.

Can Plaquenil make you feel worse?

Plaquenil can cause side effects such as diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. If you have a GI condition such as UC, you may be at higher risk for these side effects. Plaquenil may also make symptoms of your condition worse.

Can you take Plaquenil for life?

Plaquenil and other anti-malarials are the key to controlling lupus long term, and some lupus patients may be on Plaquenil for the rest of their lives.

Is it better to take Plaquenil in the morning or night?

If you take Plaquenil once daily, there's no best time of day to take it. But you should take it at about the same time each day. And it's recommended that you take your dose with food or milk. If you take Plaquenil twice daily, you can take one dose in the morning and one in the evening.

What pain reliever can I take with Plaquenil?

Hydroxychloroquine can be taken with other medications – NSAIDS (Celebrex®, ibuprofen, naproxen), prednisone, Enbrel®.

How long does it take for Plaquenil to reduce inflammation?

Hydroxychloroquine starts to work gradually. For inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, it can take 6 to 12 weeks before you notice any benefits. It's important to keep taking hydroxychloroquine.

Does Plaquenil affect your heart?

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is a disease-modifying antirheumatic drug that has been widely used for the treatment of RA. HCQ cardiotoxicity has been implicated as a rare yet potentially life-threatening side effect of the drug, primarily causing cardiomyopathy that results in HF.

How many years can you take hydroxychloroquine?

A new investigation analyzed the retinal changes over a five-year period in people with lupus and did not find clinically relevant retinal changes in the group. The study concludes that hydroxychloroquine therapy is safe for long-term use at doses <5 mg/kg/day.

Can you drink coffee with Plaquenil?

This medication may irritate the stomach, and should be taken with food. It is best to avoid coffee, spicy food or alcohol.

Can I take Plaquenil and vitamin D together?

Interactions between your drugs

No interactions were found between Plaquenil and Vitamin D3. However, this does not necessarily mean no interactions exist. Always consult your healthcare provider.

How common is hair loss with Plaquenil?

Hair loss is not a documented side effect of Plaquenil. If it does occur, it is so extremely rare that it is not documented in the literature. In fact, hydroxychloroquine is actually used to prevent hair loss from other medications.

Does Plaquenil cause hair loss?

The Plaquenil is Causing Hair Loss

Usually Plaquenil related hair loss starts 2-6 months after the Plaquenil was started. We call this a drug induced telogen effluvium.