Comment by scottmsul | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottmsul | Hacker News Reader

A cardiotoxicity paper from the WHO in 2017 said the following:

"Despite hundreds of millions of doses administered in the treatment of malaria, there have been no reports of sudden unexplained death associated with quinine, chloroquine or amodiaquine, although each drug causes QT/QTcinterval prolongation. Unfortunately, there are relatively few prospective studies of the electrocardiographic effects of these drugs."

Link to paper: https://www.who.int/malaria/mpac/mpac-mar2017-erg-cardiotoxi...

Link to Chris Martenson's video where I first heard about the 2017 paper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN_YpFhdii4

Chris Martenson is doing an awesome job staying on top of the science in an apolitical manner.

Having ACE2 receptors depleted increases blood pressure and changes the properties of blood itself (probably the source of the weird clotting issues), so it makes sense that there would be more risk with Covid-19. Plus many or most Covid patients are probably already polypharming with 5+ drugs already given their age, unlike people going on vacation to Bali or wherever.

I wouldn't trust the trials showing that it's dangerous, but I wouldn't assume it's safe either.

From the linked paper:

Summary of findings and proposed recommendations

1. Apart from halofantrine, antimalarial medicines thatprolong the QT/QTc interval,such as quinine, chloroquine, artesunate-amodiaquine and dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine,have beenassociated with a low risk of cardiotoxicity.

This seems to indicate that there is a risk, albeit low. The risk is for cardiotoxicity, not sudden deaths.

The data from those hundreds of millions of doses were on people who did not have COVID-19. It's not contradictory to say that the drug does not tend to cause these effects generally, but does cause these effects in a specific context. Like, say, a deadly disease wrecking havoc on your oxygen levels. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Hard to know anything.

Also, the dosage may be different

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