It is important to discuss your medications with your doctor to determine if any of your medications could have this dangerous interaction. Summary: Grapefruit can increase the side effects of some statin cholesterol medications, causing muscle damage. Reducing your intake of these citrus products or simply choosing alternative fluids (including water) may be advisable to prevent such potentially dangerous side effects. One study showed that drinking a glass of grapefruit juice with simvastatin or lovastatin increased blood levels of these statins by 260 ( 5 ). The bottom line is that you should be careful when consuming citrus juice, especially grapefruit juice, if you require certain classes of medications (which have the potential for these serious reactions). In this way, there can be some medications that could be safer to take with grapefruit juice. It is important to realize that the grapefruit interaction is specific to only certain medications within a drug class and not the entire class of drugs. The toxic effect can potentially occur even if grapefruit is consumed many hours before taking the medication.Īs an example simvastatin taken daily with a 7 ounce glass of grapefruit juice, can result in up to a 330 percent higher concentration of drug in the body compared to taking it with water alone, potentially leading to a serious and and potentially life threatening complication called rhabdomyolysis which can lead to kidney failure. The degree of the grapefruit interaction is variable, with the potential for a toxic effect of a medication to occur from just one serving of grapefruit juice.

Grapefruit and medications