Personal success stories

[Jamoverton]

I've seen hydroxychloroquine/Plaquenil mentioned on here several times. It is also mentioned in this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3692271/

I've tried to search for it on this site but unfortunately the search function on here is awful and often won't return any results, though I know they're on here.

[Dutch1]

I can remember a number of positive posts when I first took hydroxychloroquine in 2011. It is used more regularly to treat lupus of the skin (which can have a similar butterfly rash to rosacea). I actually approached a dermatologist who specialised in lupus to try it as I assumed she'd be familiar with how it worked and would be willing to try it perhaps - Dr Justine Hextall. I had tried mepacrine first, another anti-malarial which was recorded in a 1950s British Journal of Dermatology article as being used for rosacea. The combination of hydroxychloroquine and mepacrine can be quite powerful (it is a combination used in difficult cases of lupus skin rashes), but mepacrine has regular gastro issues, which is one of the reasons it's not used very much anymore (very hard to get in the US I think).

https://www.lupus.org.uk/how-is-lupus-treated (nb: towards the bottom the information on the combination therapy of mepacrine and hydroxychloroquine - I have used this combination in the past and I think it is quite powerful)

The licence for the brand, Plaquenil, has ended in the UK, so it is now referred to as hydroxychloroquine alone, though I think it's still sold as Plaquenil in some countries. Nevertheless the formulations of different generic brands are quite different, and I only like the Zentiva brand of hydroxychloroquine (which is an exact copy of the original Plaquenil). There are a lot of complaints about intolerance to the coatings of some of the generic versions.

Did you find it helped your rosacea symptoms? I take it it wasn't a silver bullet like in Duff Man's case...

[antwantsclear]

Did you find it helped your rosacea symptoms? I take it it wasn't a silver bullet like in Duff Man's case...

It was a game changer in terms of the flushing side of rosacea for me. It is an anti-parasitic and I suspect it may well have a role in managing demodex mites although this is a totally unproven claim! I certainly wouldn't want to stop taking it, so definitely worthwhile considering in my opinion for type 1/redness/flushing rosacea, especially of the ears which can be a particularly intense part of the face in terms of flushing.