What about Crohn’s disease drugs and alcohol?
In general, it can be said in advance that taking medication and alcohol at the same time is always problematic. However, it also depends on the amount of alcohol. For a change, an after-work beer certainly does no harm, but the consumption of larger amounts of alcohol should be avoided!
In the following, the most common Crohn’s disease medications are discussed in more detail. In the case of mesalazine (5-ASA), which many Crohn’s patients take, for example, the interaction has hardly been researched. In this case it should be carefully tested how well small amounts of alcohol are tolerated.
When taking cortisone, alcohol consumption can intensify the effect of the drug and thus also its side effects – be careful! The immunomodulators azathioprine and methotrexate should also be used with extreme caution – even without alcohol, these can cause liver damage as an undesirable side effect. The probability of these damages occurring can be increased by alcohol, which is also harmful to the liver!
The situation is similar with Humira (Adalimumab). Although the interactions with alcohol are still insufficiently researched, it is assumed that the combination of Humira and alcohol increases the probability of the occurrence of liver and kidney damage.
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