I'd like to address that question. That is the subject of some of my recent research with Dr. Croft, a military colleague from the U.K. Mefloquine is a member of a class of drugs known as quinolines. In fact, it's not the first quinoline that militaries have used that has had these effects. We have to go back to World War II to see the first widespread use of a synthetic quinoline drug, atebrin, or quinacrine. I believe it's marketed as mepacrine here and in the U.K. It was associated with similar reports of confusional associative psychosis, anxiety, and panic attacks. At the time, there was some evidence that it was associated with chronic effects, as well.
A number of experimental drugs that were developed by the U.S. military during World War II to replace atabrine also had similar effects. There's good reason to believe that chloroquine, the mainstay quinoline derivative drug used throughout much of the last century, also shares these properties to some extent.
I've been exploring the unusual and quite novel hypothesis that some of what we have attributed to combat stress throughout the years may actually be due to the lasting effects of various quinoline drugs, not just mefloquine, but going back to World War II.
There are safer classes of drugs today. The anti-malarial drugs that are available now for use on a daily basis do not share the neurotoxic, intoxicating, encephalopathic effects of the quinoline drugs. There are some mild side effects reported with the use of these drugs, but unlike mefloquine, these side effects do not require the immediate discontinuation of the drug in order to prevent potentially permanent adverse effects.