AZ vaccine and blood clotting medication interaction?

[ThuggeryAffair]

I had the AZ vaccine just over 2 weeks ago. I'm not at all worried about the rare blood clotting issue, the risk seems tiny, except that i take tranexamic acid with my periods to help with heavy bleeding. The medication works by allowing clots to remain rather than dispersing. Obviously there's no data on interactions with the vaccine, as it's such a new thing, but does anyone with a medical background know if I'd be better off not taking the Tranexamic this month?

Thanks in advance.

I don't think anyone on here will be able to advise you on this one. The incidences of CVST are so rare that even if a specific medication was a risk factor it would be unlikely to be detected right now, so would all be based on speculation.

I'd speak to your GP - if not taking it for a month isn't going to have a big impact on your health whilst potentially giving you peace of mind then it might be the right thing to do. But only someone with a full understanding of your medical history can advise you.

Thank you, I agree it's tricky for anyone to advise, but I wondered if someone who knew how tranexamic works and understood how the vaccines have caused blood clots in these rare cases, might be able to advise if the two small risks are cumulative or still so negligible as to be not worth considering. I don't have enough knowledge about it myself (and I'm not sure my gp does, because they referred to tranexamic as a painkiller last time I asked for a repeat prescription )

I would try your pharmacist. Most pharmacists are more than pleased to have a chat about medications and how the work/interact with other medications and they’re obviously very highly educated in medications and their effects. Pharmacists catch a lot of things that doctors might miss like interactions or drug suitability for individual patients.

I have absolutely no idea and think you should ask your dr or pharmacist

However I have a blood clotting disease - one of the ones listed to not get the vaccine (antiphospholipid syndrome) and I still take tranexamic acid monthly. So I would assume it's ok but I'd check

Yes, I'd try a pharmacist too, they often know more than you might think. It looks like if the reaction is linked then it's most similar to heparin induced thrombocytopenia or antiphospholid syndrome, so you could try asking if it would be contraindicated in those cases.

I've just tried looking up anti-fibrinolytic drugs and found it was trialled with covid and didn't always work well: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jth.14960 /www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7365834/. Given the similarity between the vascular disease effects and these bleed/clot issues I would be wary in case the issue is related to a reaction to covid antibodies. If you can cope for a month without the medication around the time of each dose then I would personally do that, but massive caveat that's me as a non-medical person who knows nothing about your drugs. My local hospital pharmacists are grumpy sods, but a hospital pharmacist is likely to know the most and might be worth a try.

BTW - do you also take mefenamic acid as well, maybe that's what confused the GP? Have they actually referred you to gynaecology to investigate long term treatment options?

Sorry, that's two links above, the second one was this: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7365834/.

My local hospital pharmacists are grumpy sods

This did make me smile, one of my friends is a hospital pharmacist and I can confirm she’s a grumpy sod! Must be having to read doctors writing all day.

From what I can gather though all pharmacists enjoy the chance to put their knowledge to use - I’d be more careful about getting my ear talked off than worrying they didn’t know their stuff.

To be fair to the grumpy sods, they are great at the minor bits of advice like "this isn't officially contraindicated with this other medication, but you don't want to take them too near each other because there is some effect, so take that one in the morning and this one in the evening". They also said asked about my condition, said they were surprised the consultant had suggested X and not Y, and said to stop taking X straight away if I got side effects - turned out I had side effects with X and was much better with Y. Remarkable really when you consider how many drugs they work with.

Thanks so much, unfortunately I can't ask my doctor as had closed for the weekend at the time I needed to make the decision (now!). The suggestion about pharmacy is a good idea but i think I've decided to just miss a month as every little headache etc will have me worrying otherwise.

Thanks for the suggestion about long term treatment but basically I'm peri menopausal and not expecting this to last much longer. The suggested treatment was the coil which i wasn't keen on and it's usually manageable with tranexamic acid so I'll just skip a month and hope it's not too horrific!

Appreciate all the advice and thoughts, thank you.

Good luck then, keep very well hydrated and remember not to do anything too strenuous if you're bleeding heavily in case you feel faint.

Thank you very much MRex, I appreciate that!