Gout Pal Interactive

Allopurinol is not a medication that you can stop and start. It lasts for about a day in your body, so as soon as you stop taking it you are back where you started.

Also, it is vital that the dosage and your uric acid levels are monitored regularly. The dosage must be enough to lower your uric acid below 6mg/dL (approx 350 on the µmol scale). If it is not below 7, you are wasting your time.

Your high blood test levels (presumably for uric acid) are probably due to stopping taking the allopurinol.

Whenever you have a need for other medications, you must tell whoever is prescribing the medication that you take allopurinol every day. Penicillins like cloxacillin are excreted in urine through the kidneys. It is possible that the kidneys cannot handle both allopurinol and cloxacillin at the same time. Or, perhaps you are not drinking enough water. Only a proper medical examination can answer this.

There are many reports of skin rashes when allopurinol is taken with cloxacillin and other penicillins. Simply stopping and starting either or both of these drugs without proper medical advice and supervision is wrong.

If you stop taking antibiotics before you have finished the course of treatment, you weaken the bug causing the infection, but you do not kill it. It can then grow back stronger, and develop resistance to the drug you have misused - a process similar to the innoculation process that we humans use to develop resistance to diseases.

This is a very bad thing to do. At least when you misuse allopurinol you are only affecting yourself. Misusing antibiotics creates so-called “superbugs” - drug resistant diseases that affect all of us, often fatally.

It's time to stop messing about, and take your medications seriously.

Take the allopurinol every day. Test uric acid monthly or as advised by your doctor and adjust dosage to achieve normal uric acid levels. Never stop doing this.

If you need other medications, discuss possible interactions and different options before you start taking them.