General information about any interaction between penicillin and alcohol.

Fråga: General information about any interaction between penicillin and alcohol.

Sammanfattning: """Antabuse"" effect with alcohol intake has been reported in relation to metronidazole and several other antimicrobial agents, but not to common penicillins. The pharmacokinetics of phenoxymethylpenicillin and amoxicillin is not influenced by alcohol intake."

Svar: A similar question has been dealt with previously at the Drug Information Centre (1). In summary: several antibiotics can give rise to "Antabuse" effect when taken with alcohol, such as chloramphenicol, griseofulvin, isoniazid, metronidazole, cefamandole, cefoperazone and moxalactam. This effect, however, is probably only of practical significance in connection with metronidazole. Interactions between common penicillin and alcohol had not been documented.

An updated Medline search has found two in vivo human studies concerning interaction between penicillin and alcohol. Lindberg and co-workers (2) studied the effect of alcohol on the pharmacokinetics of phenoxymethylpenicillin in six healthy volunteers. They showed that ethanol had no influence on peak penicillin serum concentrations, half-lives or 24 hour urinary excretion. In the other study (3) amoxicillin kinetics and ethanol ingestion were investigated in 8 healthy volunteers. There were no statistically significant differences in the rate of elimination, peak concentration or area under the curve (AUC) of amoxicillin with or without concomitant ethanol intake.