Losartan (Cozaar) is a popular prescription medication used to treat high blood pressure. In this video I cover some of the more common side effects we see plus 6 warnings you and your doctor should know about.
Hi guys this is curtis alexander i’m a pharmacist in this video i will be covering losartan it’s a blood pressure medication but i’m going to be covering specifically side effects and then six warnings you and your doctor need to keep in mind if you decide to go on it before i get into that go to curtis alexander.com there’s a free report there you will find helpful
A lot of people who come to the channel are looking for options outside of drugs and surgery i give you the best ones i know and the ones i personally use so let’s hop right into it so losartan is what’s known as an angiotensin ii receptor blocker and basically the end result of that is it’s going to lower the blood pressure but one of the nice things it doesn’t
Affect bradykinen as much and bradykine is one of those compounds i’ve talked about in other videos when people take ace inhibitors and they get that annoying cough usually because of bradykinen so a drug like losartan will avoid that it also increases urinary flow rate but that comes and leads to potential side effects as well which we’ll get into right now so
Main side effects we’re going to see now keep in mind if you are a type 2 diabetic these are going to be a little bit higher in all 2 type 2 diabetics particularly with type 2 diabetic nephropathy so if you have any kidney issues we want to pump the brakes a little bit with losartan and just pay attention to what we’re doing because it can increase your chances of
Side effects not high okay in studies we’re talking four percent but it’s just important that you know about these so these are the most common ones um so first of all we have increase in potassium levels again some of the increase in urinary flow rates we’re getting rid of certain things which causes an imbalance so we can see slightly elevated potassium levels
You do want to make sure that the doctor is monitoring those we can see an increase again all four percent on these in studies of urinary tract infections which is kind of interesting then we have orthostatic hypotension so when you go from a lying line down or sitting position and you get up and your blood pressure drops substantially orthostatic hypotension okay
Uh we can see diarrhea and we can see anemia overall i find losartan is very well tolerated but those are the side effects that we’re most concerned about that we see the most in studies now warnings okay there’s a few of them here so first of all is angioedema so it’s basically what somebody looks like when they get an allergic reaction swelling under the skin
Losartan doesn’t cause it as much and we’re not concerned about it as much but if you’ve ever had a reaction like that to the ace inhibitor class of medications we do we would be concerned we’d be careful with using losartan the next one is aortic or mitral stenosis basically the valves in your heart are causing the blood to not flow as well um that’s a group
Of people we’d want to be careful about using losartan ascites essentially you’ll have a buildup of fluid in the abdomen area this can be caused by different things but one of the causes is cirrhosis scarring of the liver usually we’re okay to use losartan in these folks but people who have the cirrhosis we may want to avoid it so that’s something to keep in
Mind if you have liver or kidney issues not that you can’t use it we may have to do a dosage change this is especially the case in anybody with liver issues we may have to do that finally in race does play a role in black patients if you’re taking losartan to lower the blood pressure we don’t see as big of a drop in the blood pressure in black patients so that’s
Something to keep in mind again we may see a dosage increase there and then in surgical patients now there’s different kinds of surgeries this is a very general rule and most surgeons doctors haven’t come to a consensus on this per se but usually if it’s a non-cardiac surgery they will still most most likely have you continue the los art but some doctors may not
So that’s something to keep in mind as well okay uh so that’s everything guys that’s what i would keep an eye out for side effects and warnings with losartan what i’d like from you please let me know in the comments have you taken those certain did you experience side effects if so what were they um any of these warnings uh just kind of jump out at you as something
That you’ve seen before in in yourself or a loved one for example who’s taken any rate let me know in the comments if you’ve had any experience with it it’s helpful for the viewers that are on the channel and it’s helpful for me to get your feedback and real world experience with it so speaking of helpful i hope the video was and i will see in the next one thanks
Transcribed from video
Losartan Side Effects [Plus 6 Warnings] By Curtis Alexander Pharm.D.
