The drug cimetidine is a common medicine to manage stomach conditions. The impact of this medicine is to stop the creation of gastric acid. One of them problems is known as gastroesophageal reflux disease and is the retrograde movement of gastric contents from your stomach back to oesophagus which irritates the liner in the oesophagus causing acid reflux which is more commonly referred to as heartburn, particularly soon after going to bed. It may also leave a nasty or bitter taste in the mouth. This could affect as much as 10-20% of people. There are many risk factors which raise the potential for this happening, and so they all really need to be attended to in the long run to deal with the issue. For the short term, it might seem sensible to lessen how much of the stomach acid is made to relieve the symptoms. That is where cimetidine will come in. This drug inhibits receptors in the tissue of the gastric lining which in turn obstructs gastric acid secretion. This means that there is much less gastric acid to irritate the oesophagus and result in the symptoms. Cimetidine is familiar under the name brand, Tagamet from drug firm Glaxosmithkline Inc, but there are several other less well known brands on the market. It was first marketed in 1976 and shortly became the first of the so-called ‘blockbuster’ drugs and making a sizeable profit for the company. It was originally a doctor prescribed only pharmaceutical but it currently is accessible as an over-the-counter medication without having a prescription. The medication is not utilized as very much today as it was previously because different medicine have been introduced which generally give you a improved final result for the gastroesophageal reflux disease for example omeprazole that acts as a proton pump inhibitor.
During the 1990’s cimetidine started to be strongly suggested for a few skin-related conditions such as warts or verruca which are caused by a virus infection. The recommended dose from people who suggest its use is to take 40 mg/kg/day, but make sure you check with a health care professional initially. The supposed mechanism with this is that the medicine stimulates the immune system and a few scientific studies have shown that there were increased amounts of biomarkers of immune activation in the skin of people who had warts which ended up getting better. You can find lots of anecdotes that warts or verruca disappearing while taking this medication. There have been a number of early scientific studies that didn't have control group which highlighted it was very efficient at dealing with warts. However , warts are likely to go away on their own eventually (which may be quite a while) and they are often very responsive to a placebo. The question has to be asked does cimetidine for warts work or possibly is it just a high priced placebo. More recently research has been completed with control groups that were blinded and also given a placebo thinking it had been the medication and unfortunately established that using Tagamet for verruca is no better than using a placebo. In case you have warts or verrucae, then obtain information from a health care professional as to your better treatment option.