Medications
Excessive sweating can be typically induced by medication as a side effect. While it is a normal bodily reaction to a lot of medicine, such a response is usually generalized. However, drug-induced hyperhidrosis sometimes results in primary hyperhidrosis (in localized areas with high eccrine glands like the armpits, palms, feet, and face).
Medication-induced hyperhidrosis usually occurs when drugs act on the hypothalamus, spinal thermoregulatory centers, sympathetic ganglia, or the eccrine-neuroeffector junction. It causes excessive sweating when acetylcholine impairs the receptors on the sweat glands, which, in turn, send the wrong feedback to the hypothalamus.
Some drugs that can influence the sweating response by acting in the brain and the peripheral nervous system include medications for psychiatric conditions (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and antidepressants). Drugs like dementia medications (acetylcholinesterase inhibitors), pain killers (opioids and NSAIDs), antimicrobial medications and antibiotics (cephalosporins and quinolone), and medicines that affect endocrine functions (systemic corticosteroids, thyroid, and diabetic medications) can also cause the same problems.
To date, no tests can confirm if sweaty feet are drug-induced. Instead, when medication-induced plantar hyperhidrosis is suspected, the medicine in question should either be stopped, reduced, or substituted with another medication to stop the excessive sweating.
