Alert: Grapefruit Juice and Medicine May Not Mix

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-- [sPAM] Alert: Grapefruit Juice and Medicine May Not Mix

FDA Issues Consumer Update about Grapefruit Juice and Medicine Interactions

While grapefruit juice can be part of a healthy diet, it isn’t good for you

when it affects the way your medicines work. The Food and Drug

Administration (FDA) warns that grapefruit juice and fresh grapefruit can

interfere with the action of some prescription drugs, as well as a few

non-prescription drugs.

Examples of some types of drugs that grapefruit juice can interact with are:

- Some statin drugs to lower cholesterol, such as Zocor (simvastatin),

Lipitor (atorvastatin) and Pravachol (pravastatin);

- Some blood pressure-lowering drugs, such as Nifediac and Afeditab (both

nifedipine);

- Some organ transplant rejection drugs, such as Sandimmune and Neoral (both

cyclosporine);

- Some anti-anxiety drugs, such as BuSpar (buspirone);

- Some anti-arrhythmia drugs, such as Cordarone and Nexterone (both

amiodarone);

- Some antihistamines, such as Allegra (fexofenadine).

Drinking grapefruit juice several hours before or several hours after you

take your medicine may still be dangerous, so it’s best to avoid or limit

consuming grapefruit juice or fresh grapefruit when taking certain drugs.

Grapefruit juice does not affect all the drugs in the categories above. Ask

your pharmacist or other healthcare professional to find out if your

specific drug is affected.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.mediguard.org/r/0CrmDm0UPTVc

****

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

The interaction between grapefruit products and certain medicines has been

known for sometime. This alert is a good reminder to read the Medication

Guide or patient information sheet that comes with your prescription

medicine to find out if it could interact with grapefruit juice. Some may

advise not to take the drug with grapefruit juice. If it’s OK to have

grapefruit juice, there will be no mention of it in the guide or information

sheet.

The FDA also provides these tips to consumers:

- Ask your pharmacist or other healthcare professional if you can have fresh

grapefruit or grapefruit juice while using your medication. If you can’t,

you may want to ask if you can have other juices with the medicine.

- Read the Drug Facts label on your non-prescription medicine, which will

let you know if you shouldn’t have grapefruit or other fruit juices with it.

- If you must avoid grapefruit juice with your medicine, check the label of

bottles of fruit juice or drinks flavored with fruit juice to make sure they

don’t contain grapefruit juice.

- Seville oranges (often used to make orange marmalade) and tangelos (a

cross between tangerines and grapefruit) affect the same enzyme as

grapefruit juice, so avoid these fruits as well if your medicine interacts

with grapefruit juice.

Healthcare providers and patients are encouraged to report side effects

related to the use of medicines to the FDA's MedWatch Program by telephone

at 1-, by fax at 1-, by mail at MedWatch, FDA, 5600

Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20852-9787, or on the MedWatch website at www

fda.gov/medwatch.

For updated risk ratings on all of your registered medications, or to update

your medication list, please log into your profile (https://www.mediguard

org/user).

You can also reach your profile by clicking on the link in the top right

corner of any page on our web site.

****

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interaction or account for individual responses to medicine. Different

individuals may respond to medication in different ways. The absence of a

warning for a given drug or drug combination in no way should be construed

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