The Lowering Triglyceride Medication mostly Prescribed

There are many types of medication in the market for lowering serum triglyceride levels.

Such drugs can be used primarily or as combination therapy. Please bare in mind that the AHA (American Heart Association) does not recommend any specific medication. It is up to your cardiologist to decide the best drug or the combination suitable for your case.

Statins

They are also well known as HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors. Statins act mainly in the liver to stop formation of cholesterol.

They are very effective in reducing bad or LDL cholesterol, but unfortunately, they have mild effect in lowering elevated triglycerides levels (fats in the blood) as well as raising good or HDL cholesterol levels.

In general, statins can be tolerated rapidly by your body systems. However, hepatic and muscular problems have been reported very commonly.

For this purpose, your physician will advise you to make a regular liver function testing in order to catch the damages in time.

With regards to contraindications, pregnancy and liver impairment in particular are introduced as the two main contraindications of using statins.

Nowadays, the statins found commonly in the market include:

Fibrates

They are also known as fibric acid derivatives.

Fibrates are the most potent triglyceride medication in the market today. They can markedly lower triglycerides (blood fats), elevate HDL cholesterol levels, and decrease LDL levels.

Fibrates might be prescribed alone or in combination with statins.

The Fibrates found in the pharmaceutical market are:

Niacin

It is also known with the generic name of Nicotic Acid.

Niacin has a great influence on the liver production of fats. Your doctor will prescribe niacin to reduce triglycerides and LDL “Bad” cholesterol and elevate HDL “Good” cholesterol levels in your blood.

There are some serious side effects of niacin, including:

Flushing (redness of the skin)
Itching of the skin
Stomach disturbance
Toxicity (rarely)

That is why your liver functions must be regularly checked.

Niacin can be also prescribed as a food supplement. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t regulate supplement niacin similarly as prescription niacin, so use food supplement niacin cautiously and avoid overdoses.

In some cases, combination therapy is used also as a potent triglyceride medication. Patients suffering from mixed dyslipidemias need to reduce high LDL cholesterol, total cholesterol and triglycerides levels all together and elevate the low HDL cholesterol level.

These patients usually respond greatly to combination therapy, such as combination between statins and fibrates or nicotinic acid.

If fibrates are used alone, they have a mild effect on lowering high LDL cholesterol compared with effect of statins.

In fact, fibrates as monotherapy are not effective in most cases of hyperlipidemia, while combination therapy has proved great results in raising HDL-C, reducing LDL-C and VLDL-C, as well as indirectly reducing triglyceride levels.

At the end, I want to remind you that medications cannot reduce your blood triglycerides levels alone. If combined with lifestyle and triglyceride diet changes, you will have more results.