Clarithromycin and Repaglinide Interaction

Understanding the Clarithromycin and Repaglinide Interaction

FDA-approved prescribing information for these two drugs flags their combination as a major-severity interaction. Clarithromycin belongs to the Macrolide Antibiotic class and Repaglinide belongs to the Meglitinide class - two categories that can collide when co-prescribed. The mechanism described in FDA labeling is: Clarithromycin interferes with the enzyme that processes repaglinide, which can cause the medicine to stay in your system longer and drop your blood sugar too low. Severity tiers matter: major flags generally advise avoidance, moderate flags often require monitoring or dose adjustment, and minor flags may only call for awareness.

Context around a specific patient determines real-world impact. Clarithromycin has 81 total documented interactions on file in this dataset, and Repaglinide has 22. Each additional medication compounds the interaction surface, which is why pharmacists run full-profile checks rather than evaluating one pair at a time. FDA-derived guidance for this pair is: Your healthcare provider may need to adjust your diabetes medication dose or have you check your blood sugar more often. Timing of doses, renal and hepatic function, age, and other concurrent prescriptions all shape whether a labeled interaction matters clinically.

An interaction flag is not a verdict. A large share of labeled interactions are managed routinely in clinical practice, the fix may be as simple as spacing doses or adding a monitoring test. Others require the prescriber to choose a different medication entirely. This page surfaces FDA-sourced labeling and openFDA data for educational purposes only; it is not medical advice and cannot account for your full clinical picture. Never start, stop, or adjust either Clarithromycin or Repaglinide based on a web page, speak with your prescriber or pharmacist before making any change.