These may occur for the first few days a person takes the drug while the body adjusts to the medication. Loss of appetite, tiredness, weakness, or headache are uncommon side effects and typically go away over time.
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. bruising that happens more easily than usual.
Side effects aren't common. However, in some people hydroxychloroquine can cause: skin rashes, especially those made worse by sunlight. feeling sick (nausea) or indigestion.
Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea are the most common side effects of hydroxychloroquine. And some people may also experience stomach pain.
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. You may not feel any different at first, but it is likely to be working.
Can any side effects be long-term? Most of Plaquenil's side effects are temporary, and last for a few days or weeks. But some side effects could be long-term. For example, tinnitus (ringing in your ears) or hearing loss caused by Plaquenil may not go away.
Hydroxychloroquine acts by suppressing Toll-like receptors to trigger important immunomodulatory effects. Hydroxychloroquine is a well-established and effective therapy for systemic and cutaneous lupus and other autoimmune diseases.
This medicine may cause muscle and nerve problems. Check with your doctor right away if you have muscle weakness, pain, or tenderness while using this medicine.
Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is an antimalarial drug with an immunomodulatory effect widely prescribed in patients with pSS reporting extraglandular manifestations, such as fatigue, arthralgia, arthritis or myalgia.
How long you take hydroxychloroquine for depends on why you're taking it. For some conditions, if hydroxychloroquine works for you then you may need to take it for several years, or even for the rest of your life, to control your symptoms.
After patients respond well to the medication, medical providers will reduce the dose to 200 to 400 mg once daily or divided into two doses. This is a maintenance dose. The dose shouldn't exceed 600 mg or 6.5 mg per kilogram of body weight, whichever is lower.
Research has also shown that common SLE treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and belimumab, can lead to increased fatigue and sleep disturbances.
Safety variables at 6 month were within normal physiological ranges and did not differ in groups (p>0.05) indicating that both methotrexate and hydroxychloroquine were effective and safe to use in rheumatoid arthritis. The difference in the incidence of adverse effects, total or individual, was almost nil.
One of the side effects of hydroxychloroquine is that it can cause changes in emotional lability. Emotional lability means a person may have sudden and exaggerated changes in mood, with poorly controlled strong emotions that may include anger, dysphoria, sadness, or euphoria.
Hydroxychloroquine may potentially result in adverse effects on the central nervous system, mainly irritability, nervousness, emotional changes, nightmares, and even true psychoses [3, 4].
Sjogren's Syndrome patients often complain of mental fatigue or “brain fog.” Brain fog impairs focus, causes fuzzy concentration, and contributes to difficulty in problem-solving. Keep your stress levels low, and give your brain a workout with crosswords, puzzles, reading, adult coloring books, or online brain games.
“Cytokines — proteins produced by cells — can amplify inflammation, which may have a direct influence on brain receptors to cause fatigue. So the first step is to work with your rheumatologist to get inflammation under control,” Ali says. “Medications that decrease inflammation often decrease fatigue.”
Previous human studies have reported that HCQ can induce anxiety- and depression symptoms (10, 11), but no reports have shown that it impairs cognitive function.
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.
Rather than suppressing the whole immune system, the drug appears to work by stopping immune proteins called autoantibodies from triggering the immune response that causes these diseases.
Hydroxychloroquine is generally safe at normal doses, but higher amounts can damage the retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye, and could result in partial or complete blindness.
Most people with lupus take hydroxychloroquine throughout their lives. It helps control lupus symptoms with very few side effects. Hydroxychloroquine may also help prevent blood clots and organ damage from lupus. It usually takes 1 to 3 months to start working.
No clinical trial has reported that Hydroxychloroquine can make you gain weight.