Objective: Review and assess pharmaceutical and clinical characteristics of chloroquine including high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-based methods used to quantify the drug in pharmaceutical products and biological samples.
Evidence acquisition: A literature review was undertaken on the PubMed, Science Direct, and Scielo databases using the following keywords related to the investigated subject: 'chloroquine', 'analytical methods', and 'HPLC'.
Results: For more than seven decades, chloroquine has been used to treat malaria and some autoimmune diseases, such as lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. There is growing interest in chloroquine as a therapeutic alternative in the treatment of HIV, Q fever, Whipple's disease, fungal, Zika, Chikungunya infections, Sjogren's syndrome, porphyria, chronic ulcerative stomatitis, polymorphic light eruption, and different types of cancer. HPLC coupled to UV detectors is the most employed method to quantify chloroquine in pharmaceutical products and biological samples. The main chromatographic conditions used to identify and quantify chloroquine from tablets and injections, degradation products, and metabolites are presented and discussed.
Conclusion: Research findings reported in this article may facilitate the repositioning, quality control, and biological monitoring of chloroquine in modern pharmaceutical dosage forms and treatments.
Keywords: Biological monitoring; Chloroquine metabolites; HPLC; Physicochemical properties; Quality control.