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Tuesday, August 27, 2002By the late 1990s, clinical studies offered evidence that the symptoms associated with discontinuing use of the drug -- ranging from flu-like ailments and nausea to dizziness, insomnia and electric-shock-like sensations in the brain -- appeared more often in patients treated with Paxil than in patients treated with other psychotropic drugs. That has spawned a network of Web sites and bulletin boards, with names like quitpaxil.org, devoted to spreading information on the side effects. And it prompted Baum, Hedlund, Aristei Guilford & Schiavo, a California law firm that had represented antidepressant users in past suits, to launch legal action last summer claiming that Paxil patients had been misled and asking for punitive damages against Glaxo, the world's second-biggest drug maker. What does it say about us as a nation that we have law firms who specialize in suing antidepressant makers? The patients say these are symptoms of withdrawal, and therefore the drug must be addicting. The FDA and the drug company say that’s a bunch of baloney: The company and the FDA note that other non-addictive drugs, such as steroid treatments and some high-blood-pressure medications called beta blockers, also leave patients at risk of problems when they stop taking the medications. But the FDA says neither those drugs nor Paxil prompts the kind of "drug seeking" behavior associated with addictive drugs like opium or cocaine. "Patients ask me, 'Is this habit-forming?' I say no," said Fred Goodwin, a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University Medical School and the former head of the mental health branch of the National Institutes of Health. "But if you stop it suddenly, your body isn't going to like it very much." The lawsuit is a bunch of baloney. Paxil isn’t addicting, and the symptoms that some people experience when they stop it aren’t "withdrawal". A more appropriate term for it would be “rebound”. Only a minority of patients experience them, and they are more of an inconvenience than anything else. If you tough it out they go away in a matter of days. Better yet, if you taper yourself off the drug, they aren’t as bothersome. To suggest, as the lawsuit does, that these patients have become physically dependent on the drug is ridiculous. It’s ironic, however, that the drug company got into this mess because of claims made in their direct to consumer advertising campaign. If they hadn’t been out there touting it as a wonder drug, they never would have had a lawsuit. If nothing else, maybe it will teach the pharmaceutical industry to rein in their television and print ads. posted by Sydney on 8/27/2002 07:31:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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