cholesterol meds and liver enzymes?

hey everyone!
lately my doctors have found that my liver enzymes are elevated. not too bad but higher than normal....
they think it might be due to my cholesterol medication. my rheumatologist and hepatologist have decided to hold my TriCor for a little while and see if my live liver tests show any change.

does anyone else have this problem? if my liver enzymes dont go down i will have to have a biopsy. I was wondering if anyone else has high liver enzymes due to their cholesterol medication....its kind of a trial and error kind of thing....and it will take a while to really determine the cause.

has anyone had an luck with any of the other more "liver friendly" cholesterol medications?

thanks for listening!

Post Edited (misscali415) : 9/24/2007 9:30:05 AM (GMT-6)

Sorry, I've never heard of it...hopefully we have a member who has!

I vaguely remember hearing that one of my meds has the side effect of lowering cholesterol...but my memory isn't that great, so... I you go back to the first post in this topic and hit the little pencil in the upper right hand corner you could change the topic name to some thing like "cholesterol?" and that way maybe the right people would notice this post?

Lynn, I think I heard that Plaquenil has an effect of lowering cholestorol and blood pressure. I'm wondering if that's the DMARD effect though. I know that my cholestorol levels have improved without much doing on my part except for the Plaquenil. I just hope I can stay on it.

Hi misscali--
Definitely cholesterol medicine is bad for your liver and will raise your liver enzymes. I am not allowed to take though my cholesterol is very high because of my liver. I just saw my "state of the art" hepatologist guy at the research center place I go and he said that there are some you can take, and I think he said the new research is showing that the statin type cholesterol meds do NOT in fact raise your enzymes like they thought they did. He would rather have me not on anything, but I guess I"m not that bad, I don't know. I probably would end up not being able to tolerate it anyway.

There are other meds that are really bad on your liver enzymes, like any anti-inflammatories, meds with tylenol, any NSAIDs, just about any non-narcotic pain reliever, just about any anti-seizure/antidepressant type drug, in fact most drugs will cause a problem. I can take ultram (tramadol) for pain for some strange reason without it raising them. And I can take narcotics, though I prefer ones with lower amounts of tylenol in them. COX2 inhibits like celebrex are bad, methotrexate is awful for your liver--another drug I can't ever take. I don't know what you are on, but if you list, I can probably tell you. There are other cholesterol drugs they can put you on but there are also very effective diets for lowering cholesterol. Are you diabetic or on glucophage? You may have fatty liver, which is common. My doc says that with the thirteen drugs I take (alot I take prn) he said its a wonder my liver levels were normal. I've really been watching my diet and what I take, including over the counter. Your doc should be able to switch you to another med and I think a less invasive, more accurate first view of your liver would be to do an ultrasound of it (with the baby ultrasound machine). They can tell if you have fatty liver or possibly cirrhosis and see if you have anything else wrong with your liver. It also gives them a better idea where to biopsy at. I've never had a doc do a bx without doing an ultrasound first to see if there are bad spots he wants to get tissue from, and I've had four or five (lost count). Anyway, I would definitely ask for that first, he should be able to tell if you have fatty liver from that and he can treat your fatty liver maybe without a biopsy. If he says you have fatty liver and there is no treatment, you need to get another hepatologist. Be careful who you let do the biopsy, if you aren't comfortable with the hepatologist, don't let him do it. I've had one that I would never let biopsy me, and others that I would let do it and they have. Also, I would have them test your blood insulin to check for metabolic syndrome x (prediabetes--linked with fatty liver and makes your prognosis worse if you have it, so then maybe a bx is good).

There are diets that work better for people with fatty liver, I eat a moderate to large amount of fat, which actually brings my cholesterol down and tells my liver I'm not "fat starved" and it doesn't have to store more fat. A low fat diet made me sick, but this is me as an individual and other people are totally different. My point is that its important that they do the right tests and find out if you might have a problem with your liver in the least invasive way and to make sure they include dietary measures in their tx of your liver and cholesterol as well as meds. I hope this helps. Let me know if you need more info and what is happening with you, I would definitely want an ultrasound first before jumping ahead to a biopsy, just to be on the safe side. The bx just takes a tiny piece, they can't see the whole liver. Let me know and you will be in my thoughts and prayers. Hopefully its just the meds, like they said.