Cardiovascular effects of hydroxychloroquine: a systematic review and meta-analysis

In an article published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases , Rempenault et al 1 suggested that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) had a beneficial effect on the metabolic profile in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In this letter, we wish to add further data to support the conclusions of this article. We performed a meta-analysis (up to June 2017) to investigate cardiovascular risk in patients treated with HCQ for RA, lupus and other diseases. We searched MEDLINE to identify all reports of interest published prior to June 2017 using the following search terms: ‘hydroxychloroquine AND (cardiovascular OR myocardial OR stroke OR atherosclerosis OR lipid OR diabetes OR glycemia)’. We retrieved a total …