President Trump Called Hydroxychloroquine a ‘Game Changer,’ But Experts Warn Against Self-Medicating With the Drug. Here’s What You Need to Know

After President Trump, late last week, expressed great confidence in the promise of a new COVID-19 therapy that combines two existing prescription medications, supplies of these two drugs rapidly began disappearing from pharmacy shelves. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowed an Indian company previously restricted from importing drug products into the US to now start manufacturing one of the drugs. And U.S. plants began gearing up to produce enough to meet the surge in demand. But in those few days, a few people who began self medicating with the drugs in an effort to prevent COVID-19 have died, and others have been hospitalized. These tragedies have raised questions about the safety of the drug combo, and how valid they are as a possible solution to treating COVID-19. The combination Trump mentioned includes two drugs: azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine. Azithromycin is an antibiotic, usually prescribed for a range of bacterial infections, including bacterial pneumonia. Hydroxychloroquine is a slightly different version of chloroquine, a drug discovered to fight malaria during a massive war-time drug discovery effort in the 1940s. Since then, resistance to chloroquine has made it unusable in many parts of the world, so scientists developed hydroxychloroquine as its next generation replacement, and designed it with slightly fewer side effects. Today, it is used to treat malaria, but in the US, it’s mainly prescribed to treat the inflammation related to autoimm...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news