This medication is used to treat diarrhea and enteritis caused by bacteria. Sometimes it helps to also treat traveler's diarrhea, typhoid, cholera, and infections caused by salmonella.

Take this medication by mouth, as directed by the doctor - usually four times a day. If furazolidon causing your upset stomach, take it with food. For best results, you should take furazolidone at regular intervals. This ensures a constant level of drug in the blood and its maximum efficiency. Go to the end of the whole course of treatment recommended by your doctor. Too early cessation of treatment can lead to relapse.

Side effects

The most common side effects of furazolidone are: headache, indigestion, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and weakness; As a rule, they are especially pronounced in the first few days of treatment until the body gets used to the drug. If these symptoms persist for a week or more, and / or if they are compounded, inform your doctor.

Talk to your doctor immediately if the appearance of side effects such as fever, skin rash, itching, muscle pain, hot flashes, trouble breathing. Also, sometimes as a result of receiving furazolidone color of urine is unusually dark. This is a common and completely harmless side effect.

Safety measures

Be sure to tell your doctor if you have ever seen allergic reactions to any drugs, and if you have or have had blood disease. Do not drink alcohol during treatment and for four days afterwards. The interaction of alcohol and furazolidona can cause hot flashes, feeling of pressure in the chest and shortness of breath.

Children under the age of one month, the drug is contraindicated. Pregnant women furazolidon assigned only when necessary and in the absence of safer alternatives. The same rocks breastfeeding women

Furazolidone may cause dizziness, so those who drives a car and / or whose work requires high concentration of attention during the course of treatment should exercise extreme caution.

Drug Interactions

Because of the danger of very serious negative consequences furazolidone should not be taken simultaneously with the following medications: bupropion, buspirone, carbamazepine, dextromethorphan, meperidine, papaverine Papaverine - for pain caused by spasms of smooth muscles Sibutramine Sibutramine - effective but not safe Antidepressants class of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (e.g., fluoxetine and citalopram), sympathomimetics (e.g., methylphenidate, ephedrine), tricyclic antidepressants, triptans (e.g., sumatriptan).

Before you take furazolidone, tell your doctor about any medications you are currently taking, especially if some of them are: insulin The principles of action of insulin - the science of saving lives   and oral antidiabetic drugs, MAO inhibitors (linezolid, moclobemide, etc.), sedatives and hypnotics, and drugs used for the normalization of blood pressure.

There is a possibility that eating foods containing tyramine, while taking furazolidone may cause headache, high blood pressure and, in some cases, cause severe complications. Therefore, doctors often give advice to limit consumption of foods containing tyramine. These recommendations be followed not only during treatment, but also, at least two weeks after its closure. Among the foods that contain tyramine: meat and fish, as well as various fish and meat products (sausages, canned food, etc.), dairy products, some drinks (for example, red wine, beer, sherry, coffee and tea) certain fruits and vegetables (avocados, bananas Bananas: the benefits and harms health , Figs, raisins, beans, cabbage), and other (soy sauce, chocolate - a healthy dose of tyramine can be obtained only if you eat chocolate in large quantities).

Fluconazole and alcohol - two substances which may have a toxic effect on the liver. Yes, and other organs and systems such combination may be adversely affected. Or at least in the use of alcohol during treatment with fluconazole antifungal effect of the latter is reduced.

How does the liver fluconazole

Fluconazole - is an effective antifungal drug broad spectrum. The mechanism of action of fluconazole is associated with suppression of the synthesis of biologically active substances, essential for fungal cell membrane structure. If these substances are not enough mushrooms livelihoods disrupted their cells die.

Like any effective drug fluconazole has a lot of side effects, one of which is hepatotoxic (toxic effect on the liver cells). Moreover fluconazole has a negative effect on the liver mainly if there is any disease of the body, a healthy liver, it is virtually no effect.

Unfortunately, not all patients know if they have liver disease, since they are often asymptomatic and are detected in a state of neglect. In the appointment of antifungal agents is necessary to check the function of the liver, but this is not always so exclude hepatotoxic effects of fluconazole in such cases is impossible.

Liver dysfunction while taking fluconazole may manifest as changes in laboratory parameters (elevated blood level of bilirubin, increase in liver enzymes), jaundice staining of the skin and sclera, hepatitis, necrotic (dying off) liver cells. Side effects from the liver can be as small time and very significant, with severe irreversible changes in the liver.

A double blow to the liver

The instructions to fluconazole says that taking this drug can not be combined with the use of other drugs or substances with hepatotoxic. Of course, this also applies to alcohol, which has a direct toxic effect on hepatocytes (liver cells), causing their destruction and replacement by fat cells and connective tissue cells. For non-severe liver disease, fluconazole may not have significant side effects, but its combination with alcohol cause liver painful blow.

Hitting the brain cells

Fluconazole may have a negative impact on brain cells - neurons. This side effect is not often in the form of headaches, dizziness Dizziness - if the ground is slipping from under his feet , Lethargy, decreased performance, seizure. Overdose fluconazole leads to hallucinations and delusions Brad - not only crazy .

Alcohol has neurons exactly the same direct toxic effect as hepatocytes. If you combine the treatment with fluconazole Fluconazole - used with caution   with alcohol, neurotoxic effects may last much longer. How it will affect the state of a patient is very difficult to predict.

Beat other organs and tissues

Fluconazole can have spillover effects on the organs of blood circulation, it leads to cardiac arrhythmia up to atrial fibrillation and flutter.

Alcoholic beverages, especially spirits, first cause dilation of blood vessels, and then their persistent narrowing. In this regard, in patients with chronic alcoholism often develop a persistent increase in blood pressure Blood pressure - dangerous if his swing? . This creates an increased burden on the heart and lead to various disorders of its function, including the to arrhythmia. Drinking alcohol during treatment with fluconazole can cause the development of severe arrhythmia.

Will the alcohol in the treatment of fungal infections?

Alcohol or ethyl alcohol - a substance capable of ingestion rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and have a significant impact on cellular metabolism. This leads to disruption of all biologically active substances involved in metabolic processes. And this, in turn, will inevitably lead to changes in the biochemical level action fluconazole antifungal and reduce its therapeutic effect.

Fluconazole - is an effective antifungal drug broad spectrum. It also has a number of side effects, including toxic effects on the cells of the liver and brain. Drinking during treatment with fluconazole alcohol can lead to irreversible damage of the functions of these bodies.

Galina Romanenko