People who take oxycodone need to be careful when also taking antifungal drugs or drinking grapefruit juice. Why? Because both the juice and the drug can result in abnormally high, perhaps dangerously so, oxycodone blood levels. The same goes for fentanyl. But people taking morphine or Dilaudid don't have to worry; neither the juice nor the antifungal drug will have a significant effect on the opioid levels. Believe it or not, this all makes sense.
drug-drug interactions
Two months ago, there was a mad rush to get the two oral antiviral pills approved to treat COVID-19. Pharmacies often ran out of these drugs within hours of delivery. Now, no one wants them. What is going on?
All of a sudden we have two (provisionally) FDA-approved COVID antivirals, which will be in pharmacies soon. They are quite different. Which is best for you?
We are fortunate enough that there is now an FDA-approved drug called Paxlovid, which does an incredible job of keeping COVID patients out of the hospital (or morgue). Yet NBCNews.com chose a sensationalist, scary headline about the drug as its lead health story of the day. Really lousy journalism.
Sometimes taking a second drug can have a profound effect on one that's already being taken. That's because it can cause abnormally high or low blood levels of the first drug. This is known as a drug-drug interaction. Opioids are used as an example of how this works.