Quinine hepatotoxicity. An underrecognized or rare phenomenon?

Quinine-induced hepatic injury has been reported very rarely. We report a case involving a patient with an apparent hypersensitivity to quinine, manifested by a clinical syndrome mimicking a viral illness and a mixed hepatocellular-cholestatic liver injury pattern. We briefly review the unusual literature on this topic, which features many cases of hypersensitivity to the optical isomer of quinine, quinidine; yet, to our knowledge, there has only been one prior report of quinine hepatotoxicity.