The effects of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine on nitric oxide production in RAW 264.7 and bone marrow-derived macrophages.

Chloroquine, an antimalarial drug, can also be used in the regulation of the immune system, e.g. it is used in the treatment of autoimmune diseases. In this study we investigated the effects of chloroquine and its hydroxy-derivative on nitric oxide (NO) production in two different cell types: (i) immortalized mouse macrophage cell line RAW 264.7 and (ii) mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDM). The cells were treated with different concentrations (1-100 μM) of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine and stimulated with lipopolysaccharide for 24 h to induce NO production. Measurement of nitrites by the Griess reaction was used to evaluate the production of NO. Expression of inducible NO synthase was evaluated with Western blot and ATPcytotoxicity test was used to measure the viability of the cells. Our results showed that both chloroquine and its hydroxy-derivative inhibited NO production in both cell types. However, based on the results of LD50 these inhibitory effects of both derivatives were due to their cytotoxicity. The LD50 values for chloroquine were 24.77 μM (RAW 264.7) and 24.86 μM (BMDM), the LD50 for hydroxychloroquine were 13.28 μM (RAW 264.7) and 13.98 μM (BMDM). In conclusion, hydroxychloroquine was more cytotoxic than its parent molecule. Comparing the two cell types tested, our data suggest that there are no differences in cytotoxicity of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for primary cells (BMDM) or immortalized cell line (RAW 264.7).