Rasagiline - Serious Side Effect

About Parkinson's and health Treatments and therapies
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Hi All,

I thought this was to important not to share.

I was diagnosed with PD September 2017 and immediately put on Rasagiline 1mg, later down the line adding Repinex XL. I am still trying to find the right dosage with my PD drugs so can’t say they are working that well or if at all.

However to add insult to injury and as if a PD diagnosis wasn’t enough I suffered a heart attack in February. Obviously a shocking event. My Troponin levels were at 3000, this is the enzyme that is released into the blood following muscle damage to the heart. So there was no doubt about it. However resulting angiogram, echo cardiogram and MRI scans have all come up positive with no damage to heart muscle or and more importantly my arteries.

So what has caused it? Although I am still to discuss this with my cardiologist and neurologist my only conclusion and that of my GP’s is that Rasagiline is the culprit and on checking the small print it does list heart attack as an uncommon side effect. How lucky am I. Why can’t I have these sort of lucky odds when buying a lottery ticket.

Would be interesting to know if anybody else has had a similar experience

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Hi ieddleston,

I was diagnosed in November 2017 and have started taking Azilect 1mg (rasagiline) in February. Thankfully I have found some improvement and no obvious side effects, although, I think most of the improvement is from getting back to practicing Yoga. But, your experience makes me think things like ‘you can’t do right for doing wrong’ or as I regularly say about myself ‘if I didn’t have bad luck I’d have no luck at all’.

As a side note I discovered, when I had the flu, you can’t take most cough remedies while on rasagiline. Have had a bad cough since the flu a month ago and it was suggested I try an antihistamine (as it worked for a friend) only to find the box of my antihistamine stated in bold lettering ‘DO NOT TAKE IF YOU ARE ON MAOI DRUGS’.

PD is a real pain in the arse sometimes not just metaphorically. I hope your recovery is going well after your heart attack. Best of luck with everything.

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