Famotidine and Ketoconazole Interaction

Understanding the Famotidine and Ketoconazole Interaction

FDA-approved prescribing information for these two drugs flags their combination as a minor-severity interaction. Famotidine belongs to the H2 Receptor Antagonist class and Ketoconazole belongs to the Azole Antifungal class - two categories that can collide when co-prescribed. The mechanism described in FDA labeling is: Famotidine reduces stomach acid, which can prevent ketoconazole from being absorbed into your system. 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. Famotidine has 11 total documented interactions on file in this dataset, and Ketoconazole has 113. 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 doctor may recommend taking these at different times or adjusting your treatment to ensure the medicine is absorbed. 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 Famotidine or Ketoconazole based on a web page, speak with your prescriber or pharmacist before making any change.