30th October 2003
To me, anything is better than theophylline...ugh.
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30th October 2003 Hotchic, what are your experiences with Theophylline? 30th October 2003 Theophylline is known colloquially as "the poison of asthmatics". It's chemically related to Caffeine, another Xanthine. It has a list of side-effects a mile long, its therapeutic range is very close to the dosage that causes toxic effects, and a list of drugs as long as my arm that interact with it and will change your plasma concentration. 31st October 2003 My side effects with the theophylline? We started me on 600 mgs qday. It made me sick, deathly sick. Shakes, nausea the whole shmear. Took a blood level and guess what? I didn't have enough in my system to have any effect on my lungs, and we noticed no improvement. We went all the way up to 600 mgs BID, which is TOXIC, and still I metabolized it too quickly. I dropped 30 lbs and just ended up being so horrible on it. Didn't ever work, so we stopped it. It was my reverse-pred...I would rather be on 60 mgs of pred than 30 mgs of theophylline... It is not uncommon for your doctor to add an inhaled steroid burst when your asthma looks like it is flaring...in fact, it is preferred to add more inhaled steroids than it is to add the orals. |
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