WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Consumer Reports, the independent ratings-and-recommendations publication, is just out with a list of 12 drugs it says have "known or suspected serious risks" patients weren't warned about.
"A Consumer Reports investigation has now found that tens of millions of people may unknowingly have been exposed to the rare but serious side effects of a dozen relatively common prescription-drug types," the magazine said.
Among those drugs: the painkiller Celebrex, which the magazine said might cause heart attacks and strokes; estrogen (in Premarin and other prescriptions) for menopausal symptoms, which could trigger breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and blood clots; and the anti-acne drug Accutane, which has been linked to birth defects, depression, psychosis and suicidal tendencies.
Consumer Reports said that the serious risks were "undetected or underestimated when the FDA approved them." The report takes a hard look at whether the Food and Drug Administration has changed "from watchdog to lapdog" of the pharmaceutical industry and notes it "is now being scrutinized by congressional committees and the Government Accountability Office for possible regulatory lapses."
One of the 12 drugs cited is Lariam, an anti-malaria medication that has been linked to reports of suicide, depression and hallucinations. Consumer Reports published an earlier article on those risks in 2002.
Also that year a United Press International investigation found that mounting evidence suggests Lariam has caused such severe mental problems that in a small percentage of cases it led to suicide. Subsequently, the drug's manufacturer, Hoffmann-La Roche, added a warning about reports of suicide to the official drug label.
The FDA also required that everyone given the drug be told in writing about the potential side effects. But that information didn't reach tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers given Lariam in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a number reported serious mental problems they later attributed to the drug.
Roche defends Lariam, known generically as mefloquine, as safe, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to recommend it along with two others for areas of the world where the malaria parasite has developed resistance to chloroquine.
But Consumer Reports says that the risks of all 12 medications are "sufficiently serious that until more is known, these drugs should be prescribed only when other options have failed, be avoided by people whose medical conditions make them especially vulnerable to harmful reactions, and used only with careful monitoring for adverse reactions."
The other eight drugs on the list -- available at consumerreports.org -- are Ovide for head lice; Depo-Provera injections for contraception; Crestor for high cholesterol; Serevent for asthma; Meridia for weight loss; SSRIs such as Zoloft and other anti-depressants such as Effexor; Zelnorm for irritable bowel syndrome; and topical immunosuppressants Elidel and Protopic for eczema.
In other consumer-health news:
-- A red crystal will join the red cross and red crescent as international symbols of humanitarian medical treatment and relief, following a vote Thursday in Switzerland by nations party to the Geneva Conventions.
The vote will have two major effects: allowing Israel -- whose Red Shield of David was not recognized internationally -- to join the movement, and paving the way for the American Red Cross to resume paying international dues.
-- The BBC reported a Dutch "suicide consultant" was sentenced to a year in jail because he assisted a mentally ill woman in killing herself. The Netherlands was the first country to legalize euthanasia, but only under strict medical conditions that the death of the disturbed 25-year-old woman obviously did not meet.
--
E-mail: [email protected]
