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Can anybody with any medical knowledge help please. i take quetiapine 500mg every night but my prolactin levels are sky high. Are there any alternatives that can help with this or do all anti psychotics have this affect?
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Guest gary19716
Posted
I'm not a medical professional, but I am a retired research scientist with very good access to medical journals, and I use it for information for decision making for all of my personal health issues.
From what I could find hyperprolactinemia (higher than normal levels of prolactin) is a very rare side effect of quetiapine, but it does happen.
One of the clinical case reports sounded very similar to yours. The patient could not tolerate other meds for bipolar control and was finally prescribed quetiapine which appeared to be effective and well tolerated. After about two months, reported symptoms that suggested high prolactin levels, and the blood test showed an excessively high value of 45.5 ng/ml which is nearly twice the normal level.
After ruling out the usual causes, her doctors suspected quetiapine, and titrated her dosage down to 250 mg/day from 450 mg/day which was the original dosage. They retested for prolactin after 2 months and the prolactin level had returned to normal.
There was one other case report that showed a return to normal prolactin levels by reducing quetiapine dosage from high to moderate. But others that did not show a positive response. One case involved a boy who showed symptoms of hyperprolactinemia at 100 mg/day.
You could talk to your doctor about titrating down your quetiapine dosage; it might work for you. But if I were you, I would look at trying a new med. Quetiapine did not work out well for me; it made me fat as a whale. I switched to lamictal (lamotrigine) at 200mg/day with no problem.
Good luck.