A Prescription for Trouble: When Medications Don`t Mix

Exercise 1. Read the article and translate it.

Medications can be lifesaving. Often, however, someone needs to take more than one medication at a time. When this happens, there is a risk of one drug affecting how the other drug acts. Such reactions can also occur with certain food and drug combinations, or a drug’s activity can be hindered by cigarette smoking. Usually these effects are minor – the person taking the drugs might not even notice the changes - but, occasionally, the outcome is more serious. Certain interactions increase a patient` s risk of adverse effects.

What Is a Drug Interaction?

A drug interaction is a change in the effect of a drug that occurs when a person is taking another drug at the same time. The change may be desirable, adverse or inconsequential. One example of a desirable drug interaction is in cancer treatment. Patients with cancer often receive combinations of drugs that act in concern to fight the malignancy.

Increased effect of a medication.

In one of the most common drug interactions, one drug causes an «increased effect» of another medication. This does not mean that the affected drug works better, rather, it indicates an abnormal, exaggerated effect.

This exaggerated effect may be associated with various undesirable symptoms, such as sweating, nausea or rapid heartbeat. The type of symptoms that develop, as well as their severity, depends on the specific drugs being taken and on the individual variability of the patient` s own body.

If severe undesirable symptoms develop, the increased effect is termed a “toxic” effect. When cimetidine (brand name, Tagamet), a drug used to treat stomach and intestinal ulcers, is taken with theophylline, a medication used to relieve asthma, the result may be an increased amount of theophylline in the blood, possibly resulting in theophylline toxicity. The symptoms of theophylline toxicity can include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, irritability, restlessness, nervousness, rapid heartbeat, insomnia, tremor and even seizure.

Decreased effect of a medication.

Another common drug interaction involves just the converse of the interaction described above. One drug may decrease the effectiveness of another drug. The end result depends on the degree of the decreased effect. In the decrease is small, the affected drug may still retain most of its pharmacologic activity. If the decrease is large, however, the effectiveness of the drug may be greatly diminished – or it may not work at all. If ciprofloxacin ( Cipro), an antibiotic used to treat various bacterial infections, is combined with antacids that contain aluminum or magnesium ( such as Maalox or Mylanta), the absorption of Cipro is greatly diminished, as is the bacteria – fighting ability of the antibiotic.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 896