Categories
News on Health & Science

Some Fruit Juices Lower Drug Effect

Grapefruit, orange and apple juices can harm the body’s ability to absorb certain medications and make the drugs less effective, said a study.

The research showed that these juices can decrease the effectiveness of certain drugs used to treat heart disease, cancer, organ-transplant rejection and infection, “potentially wiping out their beneficial effects”, it said.

David Bailey, a professor of clinical pharmacology with the University of Western Ontario and leader of the study, was the first researcher to identify grapefruit juice‘s potential to increase the absorption of certain drugs two decades ago, possibly turning some doses toxic.

The new findings came as part of his continuing research on the subject, and were presented at the 236th annual meeting of the American Chemical Society on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

“Recently, we discovered that grapefruit and these other fruit juices substantially decrease the oral absorption of certain drugs undergoing intestinal uptake transport,” said Bailey. “The concern is loss of benefit of medications essential for the treatment of serious medical conditions.”

Healthy volunteers took fexofenadine, an antihistamine used to fight allergies, along with either a glass of grapefruit juice, a glass of water with naringin (which gives the bitter taste to grapefruit juice), or plain water.

Those who drank the grapefruit juice absorbed only half the amount of fexofenadine, compared to those who drank plain water.

Researchers said the water with naringin served to block “a key drug uptake transporter, called OATP1A2, involved in shuttling drugs from the small intestine to the bloodstream”.

Among the drugs affected by consumption of grapefruit, orange and apple juices are: etoposide, an anticancer agent; beta blockers used to treat high blood pressure and prevent heart attacks; and certain antibiotics (ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, itraconazole).

The drug-lowering interaction also affected cyclosporine, a drug taken to prevent rejection of transplanted organs, and more drugs were expected to be added to the list as the research continued.

Sources: The Times Of India

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Categories
News on Health & Science

Rising Early May be Bad for the Heart

 

Are you a habitual early riser? You might be at a higher risk of heart disease. Junking the age old mantra that professed waking up early as good for health, a study conducted by Japanese researchers has found that people who regularly wake up before 5 am faced an added risk of developing heart disease. They were found to be also at higher risk of developing high blood pressure/hypertension and stroke.

Announcing the finding at the recently concluded Congress of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies in Cairns, Australia, Japanese physician Mayuko Kadono said his subjects, who woke up before 5 am were 1.7 times more prone to suffering from high BP/hypertension. A two-time increase in the chance of developing hardening of the arteries was also noticed when those in the study woke up regularly at 5 am.

Kadono used 3,017 healthy adults between the ages of 23 and 90 years to study the relationship between time of getting up in the morning and the frequency of developing health problems.

“Rising early to go to work or exercise might not be beneficial to health, but rather a risk for vascular diseases,” said an abstract of the study.

Dr V Mohan Kumar, vice-president of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies, told TOI that an adult needs a minimum of 6-8 hours of sleep everyday.

“People who go to sleep at 10 pm and wake up at 5 am or later should face no problems. Some people have a natural tendency to wake up early while others wake up late. If those who like to sleep a little more are forced to wake up at 5 am everyday, it naturally leads to stress in the heart causing complications,” Dr Kumar, a former HOD of the department of physiology at AIIMS, said.

Source:The Times Of India

css.php