Hi I'm fairly new to this. Diagnosed graves and was put on 10mg of carbimazole on Thursday. Saturday I started with a sore throat, Sunday I started with mouth ulcers. Monday I rang the gp for advice and he asked to see me. Diagnosed tonsilitus and gave me a 10 day course of antibiotics and told me to stop my carbimazole for the duration and call him back when I've finished them where he would decide if I restarted them. I have a blood test today to check if the sore throat etc was caused by the carbimazole. Does it as strange he wants me to stop them for the whole 10 days? Surely if my blood test today is ok I could restart them? It's a fairly low dose too and I had only taken 4 days worth in total so seems unlikely to be cause. As I say I'm fairly new but I was really hoping my carbimazole would help as my symptoms are getting worse. Thanks for any help and advice.
Carbimazole stopped due to sore throat. - Thyroid UK
Carbimazole stopped due to sore throat.
I had strange sore throats when I started on carb, a bit like swollen glands, I waited a couple of days before contacting my doctor because I didn't feel very ill or have mouth ulcers or anything like that and I felt all right ( I figured if it was agranulocytosis I would be feeling extremely ill) besides I was prone to getting sore glands / throats.
I was given a blood test same day to check my WBC and it was ok, I didn't stop the carb though - probably because I was well at that point. The results were due back next day and I would definitely have had to stop if there had been any problems with the results.
Maybe he just wants you to be really over your tonsillitis before you start Carbimazole again. When I started on Carbimazole (20mcg going up to 40mcg after a month) I was told by my pharmacist to take vitamin c with it, I was already taking 1000mcg slow release vitamin c with zinc every day so I just carried on taking it. I have always taken CoQ10 with it too and an A-Z multivitamin / mineral every day as well but the Vit C was what my pharmacist recommended because of the carb.
You could also take a probiotic - there are lots of good ones about - to counteract the effect of your antibiotics.
If you are having pounding heart symptoms your doctor could maybe give you beta blockers to calm them down while you get your tonsillitis sorted out, in my case where I have asthma and can't take beta blockers so at one point in my treatment when my palpitations started up again I was given a very low dose of amitryptiline which I took only until the palps stopped then I phased it out by which time I saw my endo again and my levothyroxine was increased which sorted the palpitations out.
Good luck with it all. 
Thanks so much that's really helpful. I do feel shocking but then again I've felt that way for months so it's difficult to tell what's New 
That's really interesting about the vit c as no one has mentioned this but I'll definitely get some for when I restart the carbimazole, as well as a multivitamin as that sounds like it would help. I'm also on iron, codine, diclofenac and 6 gabapentin a day I think if I jumped up and down I would rattle!
I am having the palpitations but was told to see how my symptoms improve on the carbimazole and see my endo again in 2 months.
Thanks for replying and all the great advice.
There is a rare serious side effect from carbimazole called Agranulocytosis. This is where the white blood cells are affected so that they do not fight infection properly - one of the symptoms can be a sore throat. This is possibly why dr has asked you to stop just to rule this out. Once the blood test comes back ok (you can check this earlier than 10 days by ringing the surgery) I would imagine that it would be OK to restart. I had to switch to PTU at this point, but as I say this side effect is rare. Are you taking beta blockers? Although they do not treat the thyroid hormone they can help manage the symptoms in the short term. I hope you are feeling better soon. Sandra
When I had my blood test for that I was told I would be contacted immediately if the results showed agranulocytosis. In fact when I had my initial thyroid blood tests the lab contacted my GP next morning with the results and she contacted me straight away, not to say you shouldn't follow up results but having normally waited for a week fir results I was amazed at how fast results could be turned round when they had to be.
Thank you. I'm not on any kind of beta blocker but will mention at my next appointment. Thank you. Sorry what is PTU? I'm really new to a'll this.
Propylthiouracil - an alternative to carbimazole.
This is my list of acronyms and abbreviations - which might be helpful:
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u...
Agranulocytosis is a very serious disorder - every doctor should take the possibility very seriously.
By the way, if you click on Reply to this, your response will be indented under what you are replying to and, usually, the person you are responding to will receive an alert email.
Rod
Hi when I started on carbimazole I was given a warning letter by my endo to take to my GP if I got a sore throat or mouth ulcers or felt unwell.It sayx tl go to casualty if out of GPs hours amd tell them which blood tests to do.It also has on my endo team phone number for back up incase I have problems getting the test done.Did you get one of these warning letters? I hope it is not the carb causinb you probs as it has helped me alot.Do leg ud know how you go on with your results. Take care.....kim
I used to get the pep talk about Carbimazole and its warning signs from my pharmacist every month, he used to come out from the back specially to talk to me about it when I collected my prescription, then Eventually I was given a photocopy of the warning printed out and stuck in the box beside the pills.
I agree with p1pp1ns, hopefully it will turn out not to be the carb that is causing your problem, I was rally helped by it too.
At the hospital pharmacy the lady did come to talk to me but at that point my brain was fried and I was trying to wrangle a 1 year and a 3 year old so I didn't really pay attention. Drs closed for staff training so I couldn't get my results today. I would like to think someone else would have contacted me if any problem with it but hey ho this is the nhs so who knows!
No I didnt get any warning letter, he just said be aware if you get a sore throat and other signs of infection to contact Dr. I even rang 111 Sunday evening to ask for advice and waited for over 3 hours for Dr to call back before deciding to go to sleep and hoor for the best! Still waiting for my results as my Drs is closed for staff training 
That is terrible! How can they just close a surgery for staff training! Here are a couple of links, one to the patient information leaflet for Carbimazole and another one
patient.co.uk/medicine/carb...
And this is the patient information leaflet you ought to get from the pharmacist
medicines.org.uk/emcmobile/...
I know! They do it for one day every month.
Thanks for the information that's really helpful
Ours does that as well. What is a massive pain is that you can only find out which day by either ringing them or if you happen to physically be there when a notice is on display. But most of us don't like ringing for such silly reasons - and are not in the surgery to look!
It appears they have no idea whatsoever about web sites - almost everything on their site is out of date of simply wrong!
I have turned up to, for example, pick up a prescription and found it closed.
Gosh to think I was shocked when I discovered our local surgery closed for a lunch hour! That was years ago and I had come across an elderly lady who had broken her arm. When I took her to the surgery they said it was lunch time and there were no doctors. As it was I said I could see my doctor's car and to ask him, he came out and diagnosed a broken wrist so I took her to collect her sister from where they were supposed to meet and then dropped them both at the nearest A&E department.
The best thing about it is the dirty were closed answer phone message tells you to phone 111 to get an appointment with Emergency Dr which I did yyesterday for my son. Their system said my Drs was open so couldn't give me one and I ended up taking him to A+E!!
Hi have you got your blood tedt results yet?
Hi,
Yes I have sorry I meant to post. All normal so not down to the carbimazole I have to call my Dr back when I've finished the antibiotics to discuss restarting it. Thanks to everyone for all your help x
Ooh that's very good news, hopefully you can get started again soon, try taking Vit C with it this time - even though it wasn't the carb that was the problem.
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