What everyone should know about the relationship between corona virus and chloroquine.

A thread

Coronaviruses are types of viruses that affect the respiratory tract of mammals, including humans. They are associated with the common cold, pneumonia, and severe acute respiratory syndrome.

there are different (6) types of corona virus

Common human corona viruses

1). 229E (alpha coronavirus)
2). NL63 (alpha coronavirus)
3). OC43 (beta coronavirus)
4). HKU1 (beta coronavirus)

Other human coronaviruses

5). MERS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS)
6). SARS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS)
7). SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus that caused recent outbreak)

Before the outbreak of the current strain of corona virus in December 2019, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) respictively were epidemic in 2002 and 2012 respectively claiming the lives of many.

Chloroquine a synthetic form of quinine, a compound found in the bark of cinchona trees native to Peru and used for centuries to treat malaria. it was an essential element of mass drug administration campaigns to combat malaria throughout the second half of the 20th century.

Although, Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax were noticed to have resistance to the drug in the 1960s and 1980s, respectively. It was then replaced by similar antimalarial compounds and combination therapies in the treatment of malaria.

chloroquine has been used previously in treatment of similar respiratory disease. this is because...

Chloroquine’s antiviral properties were explored in the mid-1990s against HIV and in the following decade against severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which is closely related to the novel coronavirus.

In 2004, researchers in Belgium found that chloroquine inhibited replication of SARS in cell culture The following year, another team at Utah State University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong evaluated a gamut of compounds against SARS replication in mice infected with...

...the virus, finding that chloroquine was only effective as an anti-inflammatory agent. They recommended that it could be used in combination with compounds that prevent replication.

Nevertheless, in 2009, the Belgian group found that lethal infections of human coronavirus OC43, a relative of SARS, could be averted in newborn mice by administering chloroquine through the mother’s milk.

how cloroquine works.

Chloroquine raises the pH in host-cell lysosomes, which interferes with viruses’ attempts to acidify the lysosomes, a prerequisite to formation of the autophagosomes that cells use to eat themselves.

In the Cell Research paper, the researchers found that the drug was effective at inhibiting the virus as it was both entering and exiting cells.

During the drug trial from the most recent drug’s studies showed ‘certain curative effect’ with ‘fairly good efficacy’. According to Sun, patients treated with chloroquine demonstrated a better drop in fever, improvement of lung CT images, and required a shorter time to recover

compared to parallel groups.

The percentage of patients with negative viral nucleic acid tests was also higher with the anti-malarial drug. Chloroquine has so far showed no obvious serious adverse reactions in the more than 100 participants in the trials.

ALTHOUGH, it was shown that chloroquine has some curative effect but a standard regimen in the treatment of corona virus has not been established. therefore abuse of chloroquine should be prevented

NB: over-dose of chloroquine can cause arrhythmias and convulsion.