A pre-proof version of an article to appear in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology details a small double blind study that found that oral hydroxychloroquine 200mg twice a day offered similar benefits to rosacea sufferers compared to doxycycline 100mg a day.
Hydroxycholorquine (HCQ) is marketed under the name Plaquenil and is best known as a treatment for malaria, but achieved fame recently when it was publicly promoted as a possible treatment for coronavirus. Given the prominence attributed to this possible treatment, and the world wide problem of coronavirus, a lot of activity related to hydroxychloroquine has taken place in recent months. Many centres have attempted to establish HCQ as a proven coronavurus treatment, but so far it appears that HCQ is not proving to be a viable treatment for COVID-19.
HCQ has been approved by the FDA to treat autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
Hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for rosacea is in its very early stages, and does not have anywhere near the data available compared to doxycycline. Thus this study’s results are interesting but HCQ should not be considered as a replacement for doxycycline in treating rosacea.
Article Details
Journal Pre-proof: Efficacy and safety of hydroxychloroquine for treatment of patients with rosacea: a multi-center, randomized, double-blind, double-dummy, pilot study
Wang B, Yuan X, Huang X, Tang Y, Zhao Z, Yang B, Yang B, Zheng Y, Yuan
C, Xie H, Li J,, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (2020)doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaad.2020.05.050
Article PDF: https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(20)30915-4/pdf
During the trial, participants were They were randomized to receive either oral HCQ (200 mg twice daily) or doxycycline (100 mg once daily) and their respective placebos for 8 weeks, without any topical therapies, and were visited four times.
Overall hydroxychloroquine was found to be no-inferior to doxycycline. The adverse events were similar in both active treatment groups.
The authors also discussed that HCQ is considered generally safer during pregnancy than doxycycline, so this may position HCQ as a potential treatment for females with rosacea.
I don’t know if HCQ works for Covid 19 or Rosacea; however, I did take it for chronic Lyme and did quite well.