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.
In 1 to 3 months you should start to feel better. You may continue to get better for up to 1 year. Most people who take Plaquenil also take other medicines for pain and stiffness.
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.
Keep taking hydroxychloroquine until your doctor tells you to stop. Do not stop taking it just because you feel better. If you stop, your symptoms may get worse again.
Your lupus symptoms should start to improve within 1 to 3 months after you start hydroxychloroquine. It takes about 6 months to feel the full benefits. After a few months on hydroxychloroquine, your doctor will examine you and see how well it's working to control symptoms like joint swelling and pain.
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.
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 may cause some people to be agitated, irritable, or display other abnormal behaviors.
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.
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.
Long-term use and high doses of hydroxychloroquine are risk factors for the development of cardiomyopathy. Cardiac failure, conduction disorders (including QT prolongation and Torsades de Pointes) and sudden cardiac death are consequences of the cardiomyopathy.
Stopping Plaquenil
Plaquenil stays in the body for around three months and it may take a while for side effects to go away. There is no official data regarding hydroxychloroquine or Plaquenil withdrawal symptoms. But some studies have shown that people may have disease flare-ups after stopping treatment.
Drugs that suppress the immune system may be helpful in serious cases of lupus. Examples include azathioprine (Imuran, Azasan), mycophenolate (Cellcept), methotrexate (Trexall, Xatmep, others), cyclosporine (Sandimmune, Neoral, Gengraf) and leflunomide (Arava).
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.
NSAIDs are milder than many other lupus drugs and may be taken either alone to treat a mild flare or in combination with other medications. Anti-Malarial Drugs 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.
Hydroxychloroquine can be very beneficial in the treatment of lupus, which is why it's prescribed more often than any other treatment. The most impactful benefits include: delayed ultraviolet light absorption, which can prevent flares. fewer lupus flare-ups/reduction in the number of flares.
You may want to limit your consumption of grapefruit or grapefruit juice during treatment with hydroxychloroquine. Grapefruit juice can significantly increase the blood levels and effects of hydroxychloroquine, which may result in an irregular heart rate or other conduction disturbances.
Jorge and colleagues assessed hospitalizations for lupus flares in a larger cohort of patients across the Mass General Brigham network. They again found that using less than 5 mg/kg/day of HCQ compared to more was associated with a higher risk, this time, of hospitalization for a lupus flare.
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.
Is weight gain a side effect of Plaquenil? No, weight gain hasn't been reported as a side effect of Plaquenil. But weight loss has been reported as a side effect. Two conditions Plaquenil is prescribed to treat, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and lupus, can cause symptoms that contribute to weight gain.
No clinical trial has reported that Hydroxychloroquine can make you gain weight. However, bloating or weight gain can be experienced by some people because of water or fluid retention in the body. You should inform your physician if you experience severe or unusual weight change.
Hydroxychloroquine may potentially result in adverse effects on the central nervous system, mainly irritability, nervousness, emotional changes, nightmares, and even true psychoses [3, 4].
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.
This light sensitivity can cause inflammation, squinting, burning, excessive eye watering and can make going outside — even for a few moments or while it's overcast — difficult and painful. Hydroxychloroquine, for example, is one medication that can cause significant sun sensitivity in the eyes.