Acta Med. 2009, 52: 15-18
Mood Stabilizer Therapy and Pravastatin: Higher Risk for Adverse Skin Reactions?
We report on a serious side effect in a severely depressed 55-year-old woman, who presented an erythematous pigmented skin rash on the whole body under combination treatment with antidepressants, atypical antipsychotic drugs, the mood stabilizer lithium and the lipid-lowering drug pravastatin. The skin rash effect was most probably due, in first line, to olanzapine, but the cutaneous skin condition was triggered and aggravated by pravastatin, a 3-hydoxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A-(HMG-CoA)-reductase inhibitor, and lithium medication. The allergic reaction started to develop after co-administration of pravastatin. Therefore, the combination of atypical antipsychotics with statins should be carefully monitored and the benefits and disadvantages should be balanced.
Keywords
Adverse skin reaction, Mood stabilizer and lipid-lowering drugs, Depression, Drug monitoring.
References
Copyright
Published by the Karolinum Press. For permission to use please write to actamedica@lfhk.cuni.cz.
