Juice Destroys Drug Efficacy

Scientists find that while certain fruit juices boost the body’s levels of medicine, others decrease them By Holly Otterbein Posted 08.21.2008 at 4:01 pm 0 Comments The Grapefruit Paradox: Photo by Andrew Baron In the eighties, scientists issued a strange warning: don’t drink grapefruit juice if you’re taking the high-blood-pressure drug felodipine. The study, led by University of Western Ontario’s David Bailey, found that the body’s levels of felodipine mushroomed after people drank the bittersweet nectar. They later identified 50 more medications that exhibited the “grapefruit juice effect,” stamped warning labels on them, and called it a day. Twenty years later, Bailey and his colleagues ran into a grapefruit paradox. When volunteers took an antihistamine and drank grapefruit juice, only half of the drug was absorbed.... [read full story]