World Journal of
Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences

HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE INDUCED AQUAGENIC PRURITIS: A RARELY REPORTED CLINICAL ENTITY

Dr. Amit S. Mutha, Dr. Ratnakar Kamat, Dr. Amit S. Beldar and Dr. Alok M. Mulay*

ABSTRACT

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) belongs to quinolone group of antimalarial drugs which has both anti-malarial and anti-inflammatory actions. Pruritis is a major adverse effect of quinolone group of anti-malarials and is an important cause of noncompliance to the drug. Here we present a unique case of HCQ induced pruritis in a 43 yr old male which was aquagenic in nature. Aquagenic pruritis (AP) is a skin condition characterized by the development of severe itching on contact with water without observable skin lesions.[1] The aquagenic pruritis develops within 5 to 10 mins of contact with water and within the next few mins it increases in intensity and spreads to assume a generalised form. Though the severity decreases within 30 mins to an hour, the pruritis lasts for several hours with its intensity decreasing gradually. After thorough research of the available literature in related journals and the database of references and abstracts found online in various search engines related to medical literature, we believe this to be the first case of "Hydroxychloroquine induced Aquagenic Pruritis" from India to be documented as a case report. As the sensory neural pathway for HCQ induced itch sensation differs from the histaminergic pathway of itch sensation[2], anti-histaminics usually exhibit poor efficacy to control AP and different modalities of treatment must be explored for the treatment of HCQ induced aquagenic pruritis.

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