New Delhi,
Some health care workers in India who self-medicated themselves with anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine have shown side effects like abdominal pain, nausea and hypoglycemia among others, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Saturday.
Head of Epidemiology and Communicable diseases at ICMR Raman R Gangakhedkar said the ICMR has launched a study on side effects of HCQ using data of some health care workers who had started taking it.
“The average age of such health workers…Is 35 years. The most visible side effect was that of abdominal pain which was reported in ten per cent of all those who consumed the medication while nausea-like symptoms were reported in 6 per cent.
“A fewer proportion — around 1.3 per cent — had hypoglycaemia,” Gangakhedkar said.
He said that the study so far has revealed that 22 per cent of these health care workers who consumed HCQ had existing co-morbidities like diabetes or blood pressure problems or vascular-related ailments or respiratory illnesses and they started taking the drug out of fear of contracting the disease.
“What has come to fore is that despite they being health care workers, 14 per cent of them did not even got their ECG checked before having it,” Gangakhedkar said. “We need to understand that at many places health care workers out of fear are trying to take this medicine and in some places the consumption is not that high so it impacts the study design and collection of data. We are facing difficulty in finding a homogenous population,” the scientist said. ( PTI )
