Search results below include Worst Pills, Best Pills Newsletter Articles where your
selected drug is a secondary subject of discussion.
November 2021
Learn about the health benefits of consuming an adequate amount of dietary potassium. To help readers assess their potassium intake, we offer a list of potassium-rich foods.
March 2017
Spironolactone is a diuretic (water pill) that has been used for decades to treat certain patients with high blood pressure, heart failure, swelling (water retention) and other conditions. Find out who is most likely to benefit from using this drug and who should avoid it because of its dangerous adverse effects.
August 2015
The airwaves are filled with ads promoting the newest class of diabetes medications, often referred to as “flozins.” In this article, we review the serious safety concerns that have prompted us to designate all flozins as Do Not Use.
July 2012
Find out why we recommend that you do not use the recently approved high blood pressure drug azilsartan.
September 2011
Find out how using a combination of two drugs, one from each of these two families, can increase the risks of kidney toxicity and dangerously higher blood levels of potassium compared to use of one of these two families of drugs alone. The article lists 10 different drugs in the first class and seven in the second class. Worse yet, most of the patients in the study were prescribed the combination to treat conditions for which the combination has not proven to be beneficial.
June 2011
This article lists 355 drugs with names that are often confused with similar-sounding drug names. Find out what you can do to prevent getting the wrong drug.
February 2009
Twenty different NSAIDS (nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs) are listed in this article that can adversely affect your blood pressure control. The article discusses the way in which this happens and what you can do about it.
November 2008
One of the most common drug interactions occurs when patients take two or more drugs that can each increase blood potassium levels. The resulting condition, hyperkalemia (increased blood potassium levels), can cause nausea, fatigue, muscle weakness or tingling sensations, as well as heart abnormalities, showing up as an abnormal electrocardiogram. In some cases it can be fatal. The article lists 50 drugs which, especially when used in combination, can cause hyperkalemia.
December 2003
This statement appears in the professional product labeling, or package insert, for eplerenone: “The principal risk of INSPRA is hyperkalemia. Hyperkalemia can cause serious, sometimes fatal, arrhythmias (heart rhythm disturbances).”
February 2003
The results of a very large clinical trial designed to give a definitive answer to the decades-old question of which of four commonly used families of high blood pressure medications should be prescribed first was published in the December 18, 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The answer is that the oldest drugs — known as the thiazide diuretics, or water pills — are superior in preventing one or more major forms of cardiovascular disease to the other families of drugs.
DO NOT STOP TAKING ANY HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICATION WITHOUT FIRST CONSULTING YOUR PHYSICIAN.
January 2003
There is an additional similarity (aside from our listing both as DO NOT USE drugs) between valdecoxib and celecoxib, both are sulfa drugs and individuals who are allergic to sulfa drugs should not use them. Although celecoxib came on the market with a warning about sulfa drug allergy, valdecoxib did not. We previously wrote “It may be a dangerous oversight on the part of the FDA not to have required the same warning for valdecoxib.” Unfortunately, because uninformed patients have been needlessly harmed, our prediction has come to pass.
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