Medication Allergies: What Happens When You Are Allergic to What’s Supposed to Be Helping You?

When you take medication, you do so because there is something with your body that does not seem to be working correctly. You take this medication because you want to feel better but what happens when the opposite occurs? What happens when it is actually the medication that you have a negative reaction to? Read on to learn more about medication allergies and then contact Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology Medical Group at 805-658-9500 to make an appointment if you want to be tested or treated for medication allergies.

We can help identify medication allergies

The first step is to identify any medication allergies you may have. When you see a list of side effects on the side of a type of medication, that is essentially all the potential allergies that a person could have. Some medicines are safe for most people but can kill others – like penicillin. Knowing if you are allergic to medications can help keep you safe and in some cases, alive. If you have any reason to believe that you are allergic to medications that you have taken then we urge you to contact Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology Medical Group at 805-658-9500 to make an appointment with a specialist right away.

We will begin with a physical exam and case history

First and foremost, we will ask you questions about your health history. We are very experienced in assessing allergy issues and we know the right questions and how to interpret the answers we get from you. We will then perform a physical exam. During this process we will ask you more about the medications and about the symptoms you have experienced. The more information you can provide, the better able we will be to proceed with the right tests.

Blood tests may help

Many people assume that blood tests are the best way to test for allergies to medication but this is not actually true in most cases. While they do have limited usefulness in testing for medication allergies, they can mostly find certain allergies to specific things like insulin, antibiotics, and muscle relaxants. If we have reason to believe that you are allergic to one of these specific types of medications, and the reaction you had was serious enough that we do not believe a skin prick test would be wise, then a blood test may make sense.

Skin Prick Tests

Skin prick tests are a standby in almost any type of allergy testing, and for good reason. While skin tests do tend to give out false positives in some cases, they give reliable negative results and therefore can be used to conclusively rule out certain suspected allergens. We can perform these allergy skin tests in our office.