Wouldn't be a drug without a side effect

[beige_alert]

Well, I’m pretty sure the cause of the nasty itchy rash was Ibuprofen. That makes it easy to fix: Stop taking the stuff.

It was a mystery for a while, because while I’d eaten some things that were at least plausible allergens, I’d had them all before. While I’d first purchased a bottle of Ibuprofen fairly recently, I was pretty sure I had used it before this week, too. I think that I’d previously used just a single dose and did have some itching, but not so severe that it stood out as an important problem given the winter background of dry itchy skin. Taking the stuff for a few successive days, however, really got the rash going.

Naproxen is in the same 2-arylpropionic acid family, maybe I’d best avoid it, too. Plain old acetylsalicylic acid, though, is fine, as is N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)ethanamide, variously known as acetaminophen or paracetamol.

Comments

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

ASA has some cross-sensitivity with ibuprofen and other NSAIDs - be careful, unless you've had ASA and not reacted before. For allergy it doesn't really make sense, since they're not chemically that similar, but for a rash it could just be that their similar method of screwing around with prostaglandins is promoting histamine release or something, so it's plausible that you could react to both. So watch yr step. :)

Also: I clasped my hands with delight when I saw you use 2-arylpropionic in a sentence. Whee! This calls for my periodic table shirt icon! Ignore the tinfoil hats, we're scientists, yo.

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

Was hoping you'd turn up. Thanks for the comments. I have used both ASA and acetaminophen many times without problems.

My favorite geeky t-shirts:
look closely (http://www.flickr.com/photos/beigephotos/132983503/)
sexy (http://www.flickr.com/photos/beigephotos/20716937/)
yum (http://www.flickr.com/photos/beigephotos/170526373/)