Wednesday 27 April 2011

Lethal drug combinations

If the dangers of Conventional Medicine or Big Pharma drugs are not bad enough when just one drug is implicated, when two or more are involved, the dangers are that much more serious. And doctors know little about them. Drug testing is largely unhelpful. Well, conventional medicine does not know about the DIEs (disease causing effects) of individual drugs before patients start taking them! Why should we imagine that they are aware of the consequences of giving us two or more drugs. Some older people are taking 10, 12 or more drugs every day.

Now, research has shown that one of the most widely used drug combination is responsible for kidney failure and death. Does it matter what this combination is? Probably not. Any two drugs can interact within the body in ways that not even the smartest doctor is aware. But you might as well know about this particular combination, and go straight to your doctor to get you off them.

Combining an ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) drug with an ARB (angiotensin receptor blocker) can be lethal, especially among elderly patients, say researchers from the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary.


And at least 15 per cent of patients shouldn’t be taking the combination at all, as they have don’t even have the heart problems for which the drugs are intended to treat.

Most of the deaths and kidney problems occur within three months of starting treatment.  After that time, those patients still alive invariably come off the combination because their blood pressure has fallen perilously low.

(Source: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2011; doi: 10.1503/cmaj.101333).

Thanks to 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' (WDDTY) for this information.