Side effects
If you experience any unusual issues while taking this medication, contact your doctor right away. You or your doctor can submit a report to the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program online at http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch or by phone at 1-800-332-1088 if you experience a serious side effect. Call your doctor right away if you experience any of the following symptoms or any of those mentioned in the IMPORTANT WARNING section: dizziness, drowsiness, headache, swollen, tender gums, decreased appetite, reddened eyes, hair loss, seizures, confusion, weakness, or difficulty moving one or both sides of the body, loss of consciousness. Methotrexate may also have other side effects. There may be side effects from methotrexate. If any of these side effects persist or are severe, consult your doctor right away: dizziness, drowsiness, headache, swollen, tender gums, decreased appetite, reddened eyes, hair loss, confusion, weakness, or difficulty moving one or both sides of the body, loss of consciousness.
Interactions
Ask your doctor or pharmacist for more information. Inform your doctor right away if you take any of the following medications: nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), such as aspirin, choline magnesium trisalicylate (Tricosal, Trilisate), ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), magnesium salicylate (Doan's), naproxen (Aleve, Naprosyn), or salsalate; acitretin (Soriatane), azathioprine ( Inform your doctor about all of the medications you take, including vitamins, herbal supplements, prescription and non-prescription drugs.
Contraindications
Elderly people, newborns, people with kidney or liver disease, and bone marrow depression. Monitor haematological, renal and hepatic function, and GI toxicity regularly. Ulcerative disorders of the GI tract.
The cyclophosphamide dose was either a 500 mg/minjection every month or a 1-2 mg pill every day. This causes high levels of inflammation that lead to scar tissue building up in the skin. Sixty-five patients received 20 to 25 mg of methotrexate a week, while 118 received up to 1 g of CellCept (mycophenolate mofetil) twice a day, and 87 received cyclophosphamide. Another group of 56 patients did not receive any immunosuppressants for their scleroderma, although some were on steroid treatments.
Mechanistically, histidine catabolism drains the cellular pool of tetrahydrofolate, which is particularly detrimental to methotrexate-treated cells. Although methotrexate is widely used as an anticancer agent and is the subject of over a thousand ongoing clinical trials, its high toxicity often leads to the premature termination of its use, which reduces its potential efficacy. The histidine degradation pathway markedly influences the sensitivity of cancer cells to methotrexate and may be exploited to improve methotrexate efficacy through a simple dietary intervention. This screen yielded FTCD, which encodes an enzyme—formimidoyltransferase cyclodeaminase—that is required for the catabolism of the amino acid histidine, a process that has not previously been linked to methotrexate sensitivity.
These drugs are often used to treat similar conditions. This helps to treat the symptoms of psoriasis, which include dry, itchy patches of skin. Methotrexate self-injectable solution may be used as part of a combination therapy. It’s believed that methotrexate weakens your immune system, which may help reduce pain, swelling, and stiffness from RA. For psoriasis, methotrexate slows down how fast your body produces the top layer of your skin.
Methotrexate continues to remain a highly effective drug in the treatment of cancer and autoimmune disorders. Clinical Pharmacology When we talk about the clinical pharmacology of methotrexate, we need to think about the following factors: Methotrexate must be taken once weekly. Methotrexate should be avoided in patients with hepatic dysfunction. Folinic acid is used to reverse the effects of methotrexate in overdose.
This increases the risk of severe infections and other blood disorders. Typically, folic acid is given alongside methotrexate treatment – taken on a different day of the week (often recommended the day after methotrexate treatment). There are two primary modes of action with methotrexate: First, methotrexate inhibits dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), an enzyme that plays a role in converting dihydrofolate to the active tetrahydrofolate (THF).