Chloroquine Cardiotoxicity

Abstract

To the Editor: Ratliff and colleagues (Jan. 22 issue) ¹ reported the usefulness of endomyocardial biopsy for the diagnosis of chloroquine cardiomyopathy in patients with lupus erythematosus. They stated that "documentation of cardiac involvement in humans has been limited to the evidence of conduction abnormalities in one patient, congestive heart failure in another patient, and the finding of vacuolar degeneration of cardiac muscle during two autopsies." Since our published data on chloroquine cardiotoxicity are not mentioned in their paper, a brief summary is presented to your readers.In 1977 we noticed that severe atrioventricular block may occur in the course of . . .