The ten most common side effects seen in Cymbalta / duloxetine users compared to placebo.
The doctor is in hey guys it’s your pal dr sal again hope your day is going great today we’re going to take a look at cymbalta also known by the chemical name duloxetine now cymbalta is a very useful drug it’s the swiss army knife of medications because it’s so multifaceted it’s been licensed for use in depression it’s been used for generalized anxiety
Disorder it’s been used for diabetic neuropathy its licensed also for treatment of fibromyalgia it’s also licensed for treatment for chronic lower back pain and even lowly osteoarthritis of the knees so it’s a particularly useful drug especially if there’s intersection between these different disorders so for example if you’re suffering with depression and
Osteoarthritis to the knees or generalize anxiety disorder and you’ve also got chronic lower back pain well guess what we’ve got the drug for you it covers both so you can kill two birds with one pill so now let’s look at the potential side effects now because cymbalta is so widely used across a spectrum of different disorders there was actually a study of
People on it for depression there was a study for people on anxiety a study on diabetic neuropathy study for people on it for fibromyalgia et cetera however when i looked across the spectrum of different studies the incidence of the different side effects listed here the most common ones was pretty similar across the different studies so they basically rhymed
The numbers weren’t exactly identical but very close now so i chose the depressive arm so people using it primarily just for depressive mood disorder and in that study the participants was 1139 as opposed to 777 on a placebo so the first most common side effect by far was nausea which was seen in 20 of people as opposed to seven percent on a sugar pill so about
One in every five people notice nausea the next most common down was dry mouth i was seen in 15 as opposed to six percent of um people on placebo insomnia eleven percent and constipation eleven percent as opposed to six and four percent respectively next up was dizziness that was seen in nine percent as opposed to five percent on placebo so you can say the real
Incidence is probably more like four percent not very common uh appetite decrease was seen in about eight percent of people as opposed to two on placebo feeling tired from being on it was seen in eight percent of people as opposed to four percent on the placebo arm sweating which can be quite annoying was only seen in six percent of people as opposed to two in
Placebo and nauseam vomiting was seen in five percent as opposed to three so a true incidence of more like two percent or very rare now while not common i still took this breakout from the study for erectile dysfunction and decreased libido because even though it’s not very common it’s very catastrophic for those who suffer from it but it’s not that common
For erectile dysfunction if you compare this with um the regular ssris it’s not terribly common so erectile dysfunction was seen in four percent of uh male users as opposed to one percent on placebo so that’s only three percent incidence and libido decline which could be male or female was only seen at three percent as opposed to one percent so as you can see
Cymbalta is largely very well tolerated and very useful because of its wide spectrum of indications so if you were suffering with some of these um nuisance features one approach i would tend to do so for example the nausea was overpowering uh one thing i do with my patients is the dose of cymbalta goes from 60 to 120 milligrams so the simplest solution i find
Is usually start low go slow so instead of the typical start dose of 60 i might knock it back to 30 or i might even start that from the onset if i know that the person in general has a history of being sensitive to meds so i’m going to start them at 30 milligrams and then after several weeks two to four weeks if they’re tolerating it fine then i’ll bump it up
To 60 and beyond another uh potential uh strategy if you’re suffering these problems is basically just to break the dose up from the get-go so if you go back and report to your physician that the 60s say give me a severe dry mouth that you can’t stand you could try splitting the dose into 30 in the morning 30 at night normally you just cluster them together as
A single dose but overall i haven’t um i can’t think of anyone in my patient population that i’ve had to stop this uh simply because of a side effect from it um that might just be a recall bias but i really can’t think of any that i’ve had to pull off simply because of a side effect and sometimes the side effects too if you persist with it and take it for a
Longer period of time your body can adapt to it and then say the dizziness that you initially felt with the first couple days may dissipate and disappear and never return again as your body adapts to it so ladies and gentlemen that is uh cymbalta or duloxetine in a nutshell thanks so much for watching and we’ll talk again soon thanks for watching get notified
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Transcribed from video
Cymbalta 10 Most Common Side Effects | Duloxetine By DoctorSecrets
