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How Safe Is Quinine?

Quinine is a prescription medication used to treat malaria. The drug has the potential to cause many side effects, but few of them pose a threat for long-term or permanent damage.

  1. Significance

    • The most common side effects of quinine occur in almost every patient that uses the drug, according to RxList. This group of reactions is given the name "cinchonism."

    Types of Side Effects

    • The common side effects that make up cinchonism include headache, sweating, nausea, ringing in your ears, decreased hearing, vertigo, dizziness, blurred vision and changes in color perception. More severe cases of cinchoism include vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, deafness, blindness and changes in heart rhythm.

    Time Frame

    • Though alarming, the symptoms of cinchoism normally disappear when treatment with quinine is over, reports RxList.

    Risks

    • Infrequently, use of quinine causes severe allergic reactions, including potentially life-threatening skin conditions like Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis.

    Considerations

    • Untreated, malaria has the potential to cause brain damage, liver or kidney failure and death, even in healthy people. If you have no medical conditions to complicate use of the drug, the risks associated with malaria outweigh the normally transient effects of quinine.

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