What Medications Can Interact with 5-HTP?

What Medications Can Interact with 5-HTP? (0:41)

Certain medications can interact with 5-HTP, most often prescription anti-depressants and pain medications that raise serotonin levels. Watch rheumatologist Natalie Azar, MD, explain why 5-HTP can be dangerous if you are taking these medications.

Read Transcript

Certain medicines can interact with 5-HTP, and these would be prescription medicines that are oftenly used to treat depressions such as trycyclic antidepressants and MAOI inhibitors as well as the classes of antidepressants called SSRIs and SNRIs. Additionally, there is pain medicine that's often described which is called Ultram or Tramadol which can also interact with 5-HTP.

The reason that these drug interaction are important is that all those classes of medicines can raise serotonin levels. So taking 5-HTP by supplement can also raise the serotonin level potentially to a dangerous amount.