What is Plaquenil toxicity?
What is Plaquenil toxicity?
Disease Entity. Hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) and chloroquine cause ocular toxicity to various parts of the eye such as the cornea, ciliary body, and retina. Chloroquine can also induce cataract formation; however, no reports of hydroxychloroquine and cataract have been reported.
Is Plaquenil toxicity reversible?
No treatment to reverse chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine toxicity. Recommend cessation of the medication, but visual function rarely recovers, especially in the later stages of the disease.
How do you test for Plaquenil toxicity?
Current testing for Plaquenil toxicity may include:
- Visual field testing to evaluate for missing spots near the center of the vision.
- Color photographs of the macula.
- Fluorescein angiography (FA)
- Optical coherence tomography (OCT)
- Fundus autofluorescence.
- Multifocal electroretinograms (mf ERG).
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.
How common is Plaquenil toxicity?
Hydroxychloroquine retinal toxicity is far more common than previously considered; an overall prevalence of 7.5% was identified in patients taking HCQ for greater than 5 years, rising to almost 20% after 20 years of treatment.
How common is blindness from hydroxychloroquine?
Hydroxychloroquine-related eye problems were once considered rare, but better detection methods now show that they occur in about 7 percent of patients.
What does retinal toxicity look like?
Retinal toxicity is most frequently characterized by symptoms of central visual loss including reading difficulties, reduced color vision, and central scotomata. Maculopathy ranging from a subtle disturbance of the retinal pigment epithelium to bull’s-eye maculopathy has been described.
How long does it take to get hydroxychloroquine out of your system?
A drug’s half-life is the amount of time it takes for your body to get rid of half of a drug’s dose. The half-life of Plaquenil is about 40 to 50 days. In other words, it takes about 40 to 50 days for your body to get rid of half of a dose of Plaquenil.
