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Is it safe to go from 10mg of Lexapro to 20mg?

L

lexapropreguntas

Guest
I've taken Lexapro for more than a few years at 10mg. It does not seem to be working now, is it safe to have my doctor give me 20mg to try?

If you have taken lexapro what happened if you upped the dose from 10mg to 20mg?
 
Assuming that is not above the FDA approved maximum dose and your doctor agrees, then yes. I am pretty sure lexpro is the digested form of celexa, which I was on, it is a pretty safe drug.
 
The recommended dose of Lexapro is 10 mg once daily. A fixed-dose trial of Lexapro demonstrated the effectiveness of both 10 mg and 20 mg of Lexapro, but failed to demonstrate a greater benefit of 20 mg over 10 mg. If the dose is increased to 20 mg, this should occur after a minimum of one week.
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That being said, if you don't experience any bad side effects and 10mg seem to have stopped working, I don't see a problem in trying 20mg.
 
daniel-gates said:
Assuming that is not above the FDA approved maximum dose and your doctor agrees, then yes. I am pretty sure lexpro is the digested form of celexa, which I was on, it is a pretty safe drug.
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Escitalopram (Lexapro) contains only the active S-enantiomer of Citalopram (Celexa), hence the name of the compound (S-Citalopram => Escitalopram).

This means that Lexapro is twice as potent as Celexa, so 20 mg of Lexapro = 40 mg of Celexa - which, by the way, are the maximum doses recommended by the FDA, as anything higher than that increases the risk of cardiac arrythmia (QT prolongation) without producing a significantly increased antidepressant effect.

(note that QT prolongation at very high doses is something that affects a lot of drugs, even OTC ones like Benadryl. As long as you don't go above the recommended dose and have a pre-existing cardiac condition, the potential benefits far outweigh the risks with this drug)
 
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Yes, lexapro (cipralex) is related to celexa, they just dropped a molecule when the patent on celexa was about to run out, to develop lexapro. It's all $$
That being said, I was on 10mg lexapro and increased it to 20mg. It was ok. I went off a couple months ago after years of taking it because I was getting horrible nightmares and thought it was related. I'm also having dyskinesia but idk for sure if it's the lexapro.
 
Of course it's safe.

I take 40mgs of Lexapro and that is the point at which increasing the dosage doesn't help and only increases side effects according to most psychiatrists.
 
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