Are you getting sick of checking your medicine cabinet yet?
By now, you must have heard about the string of blood pressure medication recalls that have been happening since July.
While the dozens of recalls involve all kinds of generic blood pressure tablets from a number of drug manufacturers, they all have three things in common:
- All of the affected tablets feature the ingredient valsartan, or the ingredients losartan and irbesartan.
- All of the recalled medicines are at risk of being tainted with the chemical byproducts NDEA and NDMA, which are thought to increase a patient's cancer risk.
- Most of the affect tablets were made by one of two producers: China's Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals, or another producer in India that uses a similar manufacturing process.
While health experts said last year that they believed the recalls would end soon, that hasn't been the case.
And since recalled medications could sit in your medicine cabinet for months, it's important to double check that your tablets are safe.
This time, blood pressure tablets containing irbesartan made by Prinston Pharmaceuticals are being recalled. The company listed both 300mg Irbesartan tablets and 300/12.4mg Irbesartan and Hydrochlorothiazide tablets, which were both available nationwide.
Both the products were found to contain levels of NDEA above the FDA's acceptable daily limit.
(Check a complete list of lots recalled by Prinston here.)
Like with other blood pressure medication recalls, if your pills are involved in this latest one you should continue taking the medication until your doctor or pharmacist provides a replacement.
Abruptly stopping your blood pressure medication is considered more dangerous than continuing to take them.
If you're not aware which blood pressure medication you're taking, contact your doctor or pharmacist for more information.
If you experience a reaction associated with a recalled medication, submit a report to the FDA's Medwatch website or call them at 1-800-332-1088.
Check the FDA's complete list of recalled medications with losartan, valsartan, and irbesartan.
Please check your medicine to be sure it's not included in these recalls!
[H/T: Fox News]