Congestive heart failure: More common as well as an important cardiovascular outcome

Hydroxychloroquine, due to its multifaceted pleiotropic benefits including anti-inflammatory effects has great potential in reducing cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality. CV outcome data of hydroxychloroquine is available through 2 retrospective studies in rheumatoid arthritis patients, both of which have not considered congestive heart failure (CHF) as an outcome measure. CHF is an important CV outcome and is more common than myocardial infarction and stroke; and increased age is associated with increased risk of CHF. Hydroxychloroquine has potential in exerting beneficial effects on CHF because of it's effect of mild bradycardia. Hence, we request authors to include CHF as one of the outcome measure in the event driven protocol of the OXI trial.