BD MediDiethylcarbamazine Citrate
Other Anti-protozoals
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📋 Indications & Uses Dosage & Administration⚠️ Contraindications⚡ Side Effects & Adverse Reactions🛡️ Warnings & Precautions🔬 Pharmacology & Mechanism
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📖 Official Clinical Monograph
DGDA Approved Prescribing GuidelinesFilazine is indicated for Filariasis, Lymphatic filariasis, Pulmonary eosinophilia, Loiasis, Toxocariasis.
Dosage & AdministrationInital
: 1 mg/kg/day, may increase to 6 mg/kg/day over 3 days, then maintain for 3 wk. Prophylaxis of loiasis 300 mg/wk.
Pregnancy, hypersensitivity; lactation; infants, elderly or debilitated patients; impaired renal function; cardiac disease.
Fever, headache, vomiting, dizziness, drowsiness, nausea, chills.
Potentially Fatal: Severe hypersensitivity reactions may occur especially in the treatment of onchocerciasis where rare Mazzotti reaction characterised by rash, itching, headache, muscle and joint pains, tachycardia, postural hypotension may start within 2 hr of drug administration. Encephalitis and retinal haemorrhage.
Patients with poor health.
Lactation: not known if excreted in breast milk
The mechanism of action of diethylcarbamazine is thought to involve sensitizing the microfilariae to phagocytosis. One study showed that diethylcarbamazine's activity against Brugia malayi microfilariae is dependent on inducible nitric-oxide synthase and the cyclooxygenase pathway. It confirmed the important role of the arachidonic acid metabolic pathway in diethylcarbamazine's mechanism of action in vivo and showes that in addition to its effects on the 5-lipoxygenase pathway, it targets the cyclooxygenase pathway and COX-1.