Vytorin Side Effects: Mom and Her Depression

Mom has trouble with cholesterol. We've all seen those cute commercials for Vytorin, Merck Pharmaceuticals where people look like cholesterol laden food. In these commercials, we are told that high cholesterol comes not only from the food we eat, but also our family tree. Vytorin is the wonder drug that will take care of both symptoms. Since I was going to the doctor for a physical, I decided to have my own cholesterol checked.

Our family, on both my mother's side and my father's side has a history of cardiac related problems. Mom's cholesterol has been high for years. A drug such as Vytorin could be the answer. The claim, made by Merck, of Vytorin is that it works on both the ingested cholesterol by inhibiting the absorption of the cholesterol in the intestines and also helps reduce the amount of natural cholesterol your body produces. It is widely thought that Vytorin is a relatively safe drug. Mom was put on Vytorin around mid-year 2006 by her cardiologist.

Around the beginning of 2007, we started noticing a slight change in Mom. She had always been a very upbeat, sharp dynamo. At 78 years old, she still volunteered at the local hospital., did bereavement work with her church and worked out at the local recreation center three times a week. My sisters, brother and I all noticed that she didn't have her usual enthusiasm for all the activities that she enjoyed. She even shared with me that she was having bouts of depression, something she had never really experienced.

She was getting to a point where she told me she was laying in bed until 1:00 in the afternoon.

Mom always had a good relationship with her doctors, trusting there advice. She was a retired health care professional herself and she picked her doctors with an insiders knowledge. This time we couldn't get Mom to even go see her doctor. This had the family worried.

When she finally decided to see her doctor, he decided to put her on another statin drug to control her cholesterol. He didn't do this because of Vytorin side effects, such as depression, but because he thought the other drug would be more effective. The funny thing is that this change in medication seemed to have an unexpected benefit, she started to become her old self again. She started to become active again, enjoying her old activities.

Even though I can't definitively prove the link between Vytorin side effects and Mom's depression or the link between the mitigation of the depression and her being switched off Vytorin observation makes one think that there may be a link.