riba pills and timing

[jamimapuddle]

When does everyone take their riba pills.  I ask because I am wondering if it is o.k not to take it EXACTLY every 12 hours.  I take it at 10am and then at 6:30pm.  The drug rep said it was o.k., but who knows...

[wyntre9]

Sleep can be an issue if you take the riba too late, but i solved that problem.  I take ambien.

(sad but true)

wyntre

[R Glass]

Thanks Charm, I’ve have a major problem sleeping and I have been taking mine around 6:30-7:00 pm. I am going to try around 4 and see what happens.

[jamimapuddle]

Thanks Jim! As always your answer was very helpful. I can only hope I don't have to suffer from this disease long enough to be as informed as you.

[charm27]

I take my Riba at 6am and then again at 4:00pm. If I take the RIba later than 4pm it seems I cant sleep.

[jmjm530]

As to when I personally took my riba during treatment -- I only ate twice a day on treatment, so I took it at the beginning of each meal. Breakfast was usually somewhere between 10AM and 12 PM. Dinner somewhere between 2PM and 5PM. Because of that, there were no doubt a few times when I took my ribavirin no more than 3 hours apart, but in most cases it was 4-6 hours apart. One advantage of taking your last ribavirin dose early like I did is that it tends not to interfer as much with sleep. For that reason, some people who take an odd number of pills (say five pills a day) will split them 3 in the AM and 2 in the PM, for that reason. On the other hand, if you tend to have a very light breakfast and a bigger dinner -- then you might consider taking the 3 pills with  with bkfast and the 2 with dinner, for reasons mentioned before.

-- Jim

[jmjm530]

Yes, one for the drug rep. It's OK.

And the reason why is because ribavirin has a very long half life, so as long as you get the required dose down the hatch every day, not so important how many hours between doses although you probably want at least 3-4 hours between doses to be kinder to your system. The only exception might be if you were taking very high doses of ribavirin -- over 2000mg/day (very few do this) -- and in that case more attention would have to be given to the dosing because ribavirin is saturable at larger doses.

What is important is to take your ribavirin with food, and preferably as meal with a moderate amount of fat in it. This will not only be kinder on your stomach, but in theory, the xtra fat will help with the ribavirin absorption.

Lastly, try to space any antacids or fiber supplements at least a couple of hours away from your ribavirin dosing, because again, in theory, it could impede absorption. PPI's or H-2 Pumps (like Nexium and Pepsid AC respecitively) can be taken along with the ribavirin if needed for GERD (reflux).

All the best,

-- Jim