135 - Top Four Medications Myths: BUSTED!
HelixTalk - Rosalind Franklin University's College of Pharmacy Podcast
Sean P. Kane, PharmD, BCPS
5 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 24 August 2021
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, we debunk four medication myths that have persisted for decades: metronidazole and alcohol; statins and hepatotoxicity; cidal vs. static antibiotics; and "sulfa" allergies.
Key concepts
- Metronidazole does not interact with alcohol (ethanol) and does not cause a disulfiram-like reaction.
- Statins can cause transient increases in liver function tests; however, these increases are not associated with hepatotoxicity. Routine LFT monitoring is not recommended unless clinically indicated signs or symptoms of liver injury exist.
- The distinction of bactericidal versus bacteriostatic antibiotics is irrelevant. No evidence exists showing that having a bactericidal drug has superior efficacy to a bacteriostatic drug.
- A “sulfa” allergy nearly always means an allergy to Bactrim (sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim). There are many non-antibiotic sulfonamide-containing medications that do not need to be avoided in patients with a sulfa allergy; however, patients with an allergy to any medication have an increased risk of an allergic reaction to other medication classes.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Helix Talk, an educational podcast for healthcare students and providers covering real-life clinical pearls, professional pharmacy topics, and drug therapy discussions. |
| 0:11.0 | This podcast is provided by pharmacists and faculty members at Rosal Franklin University College of Pharmacy. |
| 0:17.0 | This podcast contains general information for educational purposes only. This is not professional |
| 0:22.4 | advice and should not be used in lieu of obtaining advice from a qualified health care provider. |
| 0:27.2 | And now on to the show. Welcome to Helix Talk episode 135. I'm your co-host Dr. Kane. |
| 0:35.7 | And I'm Dr. Patel. And the title of today's episode is top four medication myths, busted. |
| 0:42.3 | So today we're going through four different medication myths or misconceptions that have, for whatever reason, continued through decades of good evidence saying that these are either not a thing or have been dispelled or |
| 0:55.0 | disproven but still are taught these are propagated myths that we're going to be busting today |
| 1:00.3 | and let me be honest dr kane i think the list was much longer but since we are so passionate about |
| 1:07.0 | this we're going to cap it at four and then perhaps do a next episode on the other myths. |
| 1:12.2 | I think that sounds like a good idea. And, you know, Dr. Patel, to be honest, we've actually |
| 1:16.6 | had a number of episodes that have been myth-busting type episodes. So just to run through a brief |
| 1:23.0 | list of some of those, if you go back to last episode 134, we talked about hypertensive emergencies |
| 1:29.1 | and how the term hypertensive urgency is really a misnomer or a myth in terms of there's no |
| 1:34.4 | urgency and hypertensive urgency. And I believe in episode 118, cocaine and beta blockers, you know, |
| 1:42.1 | we found that evidence doesn't really support that there is a real |
| 1:45.9 | contraindication between people using cocaine and them being on beta blocker. Yeah. And if we go back to |
| 1:52.1 | 104 when we talked about the Gina 2019 asthma guideline update, mind blown that albuterol is no longer |
| 1:59.6 | the preferred rescue inhaler for those 12 years and older. |
| 2:02.8 | I would say that that was a myth in the sense of we had very little evidence supporting the use |
| 2:06.8 | of albuterol. |
| 2:08.1 | As we got new evidence, having an ICS-fermodoral combination being the preferred rescue |
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