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- What is Combination Therapy?
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What is Combination Therapy?
- Benefits
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Side Effects
- Time to Start?
- How it Works
Side effects of combination therapy
It's natural to be concerned about combination therapy side effects when starting your loved one on a new medication, especially if you're adding it to an existing medication regimen. It should be encouraging to know that in a clinical trial of combinaton therapy, treatment with NAMENDA (memantine HCl) and ARICEPT® (donepezil HCl 5-10 mg), was associated with a low incidence of side effects in people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease.
In a clinical trial, the adverse events that occurred in at least 5% of patients taking NAMENDA and ARICEPT and at a greater rate than patients taking ARICEPT and placebo (a sugar pill), were confusion (8% vs. 2%), flu-like symptoms (7% vs. 6%), headache (6% vs. 2%), urinary tract infections (6% vs. 5%), urinary incontinence (5% vs. 3%), and peripheral edema (5% vs. 4%).
Low incidence of gastrointestinal side effects
In a clinical trial, gastrointestinal side effects occurring in at least 2% of people treated in either group with NAMENDA plus ARICEPT vs people treated in either group with ARICEPT plus a sugar pill were: diarrhea (4% vs 8%), fecal incontinence (2% vs 5%), vomiting (3% vs 3%), constipation (3% vs 1%), abdominal pain (2% vs 2%), and nausea (0.5% vs 3%).
