Blood Testing Advice Needed.

[Generalchaos]

Wonder if anyone knows any specific blood test or tests that I can ask for locally to check out a possible problem?

 

Have had high BP for years now and am on a good medication from my local clinic. However I had to go into hospital recently and they for their own reasons confiscated my own medicine and issued me with what they at the time told me was a direct substitute.

 

I asked the nurse and the doctor at the time for them to confirm that it was NOT Alodipine (As I have a serious allergy to something in that medication) They said it was not Amlodipine.

 

After about 10 minutes after taking the pill I was in agony (but said nothing as I was getting discharged - believe me, I didn't want to stay another minute in this hell hole)

 

On discharge I picked up my prescription meds, and lo and behold, it was Amlodipine!

 

After that I suffered 3 days of agony, the effects are what appears to be acute pain in both liver and kidneys, bloating of the abdomen and trapped gas. The entire mid / lower abdomen is absolute agony. (I have experienced it before and know that it usually subsides after a couple of days)

 

Now, the next part of the query about the blood test is as follows - The doctors at the hospital also prescribed me with another drug - Omperazole . This drug I have also had before on at least two occasions, and had no ill effects.

 

This time, after the balls up with the Amlodipine I now found I suffered the exact same symptoms after taking this drug (though not quite as long lasting).

 

My questions are

 

1:Is there a blood test to see if anything has been damaged? As it seems that Omeprazole is giving me the same allergic symptoms.

 

2: Are the two drugs similar in anyway that would cause the same reaction?

 

3: Is it possible that liver damage could be part of the cause (I have fatty infiltration of the liver)

 

Not really sure what type of blood test to ask for that would answer these questions.

 

Thanks.

[meatboy]

first you should never excepted those what they gave you instead of your own. i think i dont have to say what you think of them.

second i take both amlodipine and omperazole with no efects.i went into a different gov.hospital last time as my regular one the scanner was not working,and this other hospital tried it on with me,but my wife refused them but kept my original medication so they couldnt change any of them.they didnt like it one bit.

if you are concerned try and find a private blood lab.if you can,we have one in korat that i visit.

[Generalchaos]

2 minutes ago, meatboy said:

first you should never excepted those what they gave you instead of your own. i think i dont have to say what you think of them.

second i take both amlodipine and omperazole with no efects.i went into a different gov.hospital last time as my regular one the scanner was not working,and this other hospital tried it on with me,but my wife refused them but kept my original medication so they couldnt change any of them.they didnt like it one bit.

if you are concerned try and find a private blood lab.if you can,we have one in korat that i visit.

Cheers.

They (Same Hospital - gave Amlodipine 2 years ago despite me telling them I was allergic, then again this time....do they get a backhander from the supplier?)

What worries me is that the Omperazole was never a problem before, but now brings on this terrible reaction. I am worried something has suffered some damage. ( also noticed this time I took it, it causes me to urinate about every 20 minutes, which it never did before)

[Thanyaburi Mac]

Moved to the HEALTH forum for comments.

 

Mac

[Sheryl]

Omeprazole and amlodipine are entirely different drugs. However, in my experience people who are prone to allergic reactions/intolerance to drugs, once they have had a bad reaction to one, will for a period of time be hyper-reactive to just about everything. The immune system gets riled up, or (if this is the culprit) the liver's ability to metabolize is reduced as it may still be struggling to manage the prior drug's metabolites and/or be a bit inflamed.  This subsides after a while,  butislowly, and in the interim it is best to limit medications to those absolutely essential.

 

From what you describe it is not clear if your problem with amlodine is one of allergy. The side effects you mention are known side effects of the drug, just unsuually severe in your case. If you have any degree of liver impairment, that would aggravate matters as amlodopine is metabolized in the liver.  In addition, even in the absence of liver problems, some people are genetically predisposed to have difficulty metabolizing drugs that are metabolised by certain enzymes in the liver.  Such people will be hyopersensitive to quite a number of different medications.

 

If you are concerned about liver damage, the blood test would be AST/ALT and any lab or hospital can do this. For kidney, creatnine. These 3 tests (ALT, AST and creatnine) are inexpensive and it is not necessary to fast beforehand.  Hopefully you have had ALT/AST measured in the recent past so you have some sort of a baseline, as with fatty liver some elevation would not be unusual and without baseline it would be hard to know if any elevation seen was new.

 

Regardless, what you want to do now is minimize the number of drugs you take to those absolutely essential and give your body time to recoup. And - needless to say - completely avoid alcohol for the same reason. 

 

Without knowing why the omeprazole was prescribed, a little hard to advice on whether safe to stop it, or safe to take a locally acting antacid like gaviscon in its place, at least for a while.

 

Would help to know what you were in the hospital for, the complete list of meds you take and what for.

 

Also if you can indicate where in Thailand you live, I may be able to suggest alternative hospitals to use in the future.

 

 

[meatboy]

what was the good medication you were taking? for yrs.for high BP.

do you suffer from acid reflux, [heartburn] as you state you have had omeprazole before,so who prescribed it for you? FOR WHAT.

are you sure the hospital gave you AMLODIPINE AND NOT AMLOPINE [THE GENERIC]

[Generalchaos]

57 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

Omeprazole and amlodipine are entirely different drugs. However, in my experience people who are prone to allergic reactions/intolerance to drugs, once they have had a bad reaction to one, will for a period of time be hyper-reactive to just about everything. The immune system gets riled up, or (if this is the culprit) the liver's ability to metabolize is reduced as it may still be struggling to manage the prior drug's metabolites and/or be a bit inflamed.  This subsides after a while,  butislowly, and in the interim it is best to limit medications to those absolutely essential.

 

From what you describe it is not clear if your problem with amlodine is one of allergy. The side effects you mention are known side effects of the drug, just unsuually severe in your case. If you have any degree of liver impairment, that would aggravate matters as amlodopine is metabolized in the liver.  In addition, even in the absence of liver problems, some people are genetically predisposed to have difficulty metabolizing drugs that are metabolised by certain enzymes in the liver.  Such people will be hyopersensitive to quite a number of different medications.

 

If you are concerned about liver damage, the blood test would be AST/ALT and any lab or hospital can do this. For kidney, creatnine. These 3 tests (ALT, AST and creatnine) are inexpensive and it is not necessary to fast beforehand.  Hopefully you have had ALT/AST measured in the recent past so you have some sort of a baseline, as with fatty liver some elevation would not be unusual and without baseline it would be hard to know if any elevation seen was new.

 

Regardless, what you want to do now is minimize the number of drugs you take to those absolutely essential and give your body time to recoup. And - needless to say - completely avoid alcohol for the same reason. 

 

Without knowing why the omeprazole was prescribed, a little hard to advice on whether safe to stop it, or safe to take a locally acting antacid like gaviscon in its place, at least for a while.

 

Would help to know what you were in the hospital for, the complete list of meds you take and what for.

 

Also if you can indicate where in Thailand you live, I may be able to suggest alternative hospitals to use in the future.

 

 

Thanks for a very informative reply!

The Omerazole was prescribed following a bout of acute pancreatits. Basically I have thrown out all of the medication from the hospital and only taking the BP medicine my local doctor gave me and I feel a lot better.

I can ask at my clinic about the AST/ALT and Creatin as I know that they carry out blood tests.

 

Thanks for your help.

[Generalchaos]

33 minutes ago, meatboy said:

what was the good medication you were taking? for yrs.for high BP.

do you suffer from acid reflux, [heartburn] as you state you have had omeprazole before,so who prescribed it for you? FOR WHAT.

are you sure the hospital gave you AMLODIPINE AND NOT AMLOPINE [THE GENERIC]

The good medication (I forget the name as they just give it in a plain bag) is a large pharma company (worldwide) I looked them up and found the meds before, but I cannot remember where I wrote it down.

It was a well known company - it is a white hard powdered tablet, ovoid with flat sides and has the markings TT on top of what looks like two wings on one side and the numbers 300 on the other side. As I mentioned in the previous response, I was given the other drug after pancreatitis, however, after I was discharged I had no symptoms and eating etc. without the meds. made no difference.

I don't have heartburn or any other issues either.

 

(I have a feeling that the good medication is Irbesartan. - (not 100%)

Edited November 18, 2016 by Generalchaos

[Sheryl]

Could well be irbesartan, which is a totally different class of drug than amlodipine and usually well tolerated, and 300mg is a common dosage for it.

 

Aprovel made by Sanofi is available here and is a white oval tablet. I don't recognize your description of the markings, though, with  Sanofi it is usually a sort of heart shape.

 

During acute pancreatitis there is a definite risk of GI bleed, and you were likely put on omeprazole for that reason as a preventive.

 

Assuming the acute pancreatitis has now resolved, and as you are asymoptomatic, discontinuing it is not unreasonable, but do be alert to any signs of GI bleeding such as dark stools and seek immediate medical help if present.

 

Aside from being a direct complication of cute pancreatitis, gastritis/ulcers and GI hemorrhage are associated with some of the same risk factors as pancreatitis i.e. a excessive alcohol intake.

 

 

[Generalchaos]

On ‎11‎/‎18‎/‎2016 at 0:52 PM, Sheryl said:

Could well be irbesartan, which is a totally different class of drug than amlodipine and usually well tolerated, and 300mg is a common dosage for it.

 

Aprovel made by Sanofi is available here and is a white oval tablet. I don't recognize your description of the markings, though, with  Sanofi it is usually a sort of heart shape.

 

During acute pancreatitis there is a definite risk of GI bleed, and you were likely put on omeprazole for that reason as a preventive.

 

Assuming the acute pancreatitis has now resolved, and as you are asymoptomatic, discontinuing it is not unreasonable, but do be alert to any signs of GI bleeding such as dark stools and seek immediate medical help if present.

 

Aside from being a direct complication of cute pancreatitis, gastritis/ulcers and GI hemorrhage are associated with some of the same risk factors as pancreatitis i.e. a excessive alcohol intake.

 

 

Thank you!

I have no sort of complications, I can usually tell when there is something not quite right.

I am almost sure it is Irbesartan, I just cannot find the original webpage where I found it. It definitely was not a one manufactured by Sanofi. But as you say it is virtually inert compared to the meds they gave me at the hospital.

I was on a drip for blood pressure for over 18 hours and it did nothing (probably due to the stress and the pain) my BP was over 200 most of the night and I was told NIL BY MOUTH! However I snuck one of my tabs and within 40 minutes my BP was down from 200 to about 140.

 

I have a few run ins with pancreatitis, usually they administer pain relief and huge IV doses of Antibiotics, however, this time they did an ultra sound and said that the pancreas was double the size of a normal pancreas, it didn't require anti biotics for some reason, and to be honest they were correct, it subsided within 24 hours.

 

Proof is in the pudding, it helps the BP and causes no side effects.....as yet!

 

Cheers for your response, much appreciated.

Edited November 19, 2016 by Generalchaos

[Sheryl]

Is this what you are taking?

 

If so, it is irbersartan but not an imported brand. It is Presolin brand, made locally.