Isn’t it fun being on Warfarin? Yeah not so much. So my cholesterol has been high so my primary care doc suggested I take Simvastatin, the generic of Zocor. I have been trying to get my cholesterol down through diet and excercise but it hasn’t been working, high cholesterol runs on my Moms side of the family. So I finally decided to take the Simvastatin. But first I placed a call to my Doc to make sure that it did not interact adversely with my Warfarin. I take 10 mg of Warfarin everyday and my INR has remained in the 2-3 range. He said it would not, but just to make sure I did my own research online and found there had been reports of people whose INR’s have been effected by taking Simvastatin. In fact there is a case in London, England where an 82 year old woman who had been taking the same dose of Warfarin for 30 years, doctor switched her from Lipitor to Simvastatin and her INR went to 9 and she eventually died in the hospital. They can’t determine if this was the actual cause of death but her family is suing the hospital. Anyway, so I email my hematologist and ask about any interaction between warfarin and simvastatin and he says there is one, but that its manageable, when you start taking the Simvastatin get your INR checked once a week and adjust your Warfarin dosage accordingly. So here we go again, weekly INR blood draws, adjusting the warfarin dose, so frustrating.
The moral of the story is you have to be your own advocate. Trust your Doctors but do your own research as well, and ask a lot of questions.
As always thank you for being a Clotamin customer.
Justin
Tags: clotamin, inr, simvastatin, warfarin