Insufficient warning dangerous drugs by Health Canada

Despite evidence indicating seniors are being prescribed potentially dangerous drugs, Health Canada says it can't do anything more to make its warnings about these medications more effective.

The department is responding to an investigation in December revealing that doctors continue to prescribe anti-psychotic drugs to seniors, despite Health Canada warnings in 2005 that the drugs increased the risk of heart attack, stroke and death.

The analyzed sales data for the drugs indicated that prescriptions increased from seven to 40 percent for a 24-month period after the warnings.

Dr. Marc Berthiaume, director of the Marketed Pharmaceuticals Division at Health Canada, said the department warns doctors and their patients about dangerous drugs through an increasing number of safety alerts such as letters, e-mails and its website.

"We have developed over the years different ways to increase our outreach of that safety information," he said.

But he acknowledges it is up to physicians to read the mailed material. "We cannot open the letter for them. We cannot make them read them."

He said that's because the department doesn't have the legal power to do anything more than publish warnings.

Terence Young, whose 15-year-old daughter Vanessa died seven years ago after taking the drug Prepulsid, said that is nonsense. "Health Canada claims their responsibility stops when the information gets into doctors' hands. I find that disingenuous on several levels.

"The safety warnings sent out to doctors simply don't work, and this was well established at the inquest into Vanessa's death."

Young said Health Canada is wrong to claim it has no legal authority to beef up health warnings, because the law makes it clear the minister's ultimate duty is to protect the safety of Canadians.

Michèle Brill-Edwards, a pediatrician and clinical pharmacologist and one of Health Canada's fiercest critics, agrees. "The minister has in the enabling legislation called the National Department of Health Act very broad powers for the protection of the public."

"I think Dr. Berthiaume is voicing the standard views of the department that seek to limit the department's responsibility for safety."

Although Health Canada refers to its drug alerts as risk communication, Brill-Edwards said that it's hard to call it communication when no one seems to be paying attention.

Source: CBC News

Related article:

Dangerous drugs still prescribed to seniors

Drug industry used too much as source for Doctors' prescription

Following my earlier article of today about drug use among seniors:

Dr. John Haggie, a Canadian Medical Association board member who chairs its ad hoc working group on pharmaceutical issues, said government warnings often get lost in the stack of documents physicians routinely receive.

Haggie warns that there is a lack of impartial information available to doctors.

"Most of the information the physician would receive in the general course of a week on medication by and large tends to come from material from drug companies," he said.

Drug companies have a very active sales and marketing team, he said, and they follow Health Canada warnings by issuing their own.

Health Canada warnings are sent out to physicians by fax, e-mail and mail, but are often one among many documents received.

Haggie said the CMA is trying to work with the academic community to provide doctors with unbiased education material to replace documents received from drug companies.

The association is also trying to get tools on its website so doctors can quickly access the latest peer-reviewed information on what drugs are safe and which need to be used with caution.

Source: CBC

Related article:

Dangerous drugs still prescribed to seniors

editor's opinion:

"Just as I thought...............the power of marketing"

Dangerous drugs still prescribed to seniors

Doctors are still prescribing dangerous drugs to seniors, despite government warnings.

Over two years ago was reported, that more than a million seniors were prescribed atypical antipsychotics. Atypical antipsychotics are specific kinds of antipsychotic drugs. They are considered by many experts to be ineffective or even dangerous for elderly patients.

Health Canada followed up with warnings pointing to the drugs' side effects according to 13 scientific studies, which included a 60 percent greater risk of death in seniors who were taking the drugs than in patients taking placebos.
It also warned that elderly patients taking atypical antipsychotics were almost twice as likely to die from side effects such as heart failure.

In its advisory, Health Canada requested that the drugs' manufacturers include a warning describing the risk in the safety information sheet provided along with the drugs, and that health care providers refrain from relying too much on the drugs to treat dementia.

Atypical antipsychotics are drugs such as Risperidone (Risperdal), Quetiapine (Seroquel), Olanzapine (Zyprexa) and Clozapine (Clozaril).
Many of these types of drugs have never been tested on seniors.
They are intended to treat severe mood disorders, symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults under 65.

A new investigation has revealed that the number of prescriptions of these drugs for seniors actually increased in spite of and after the Health Canada warnings.
They shot up in six provinces, including in Ontario and Quebec.

In some cases, they increased by 40 percent, according to sales data provided by IMS Health, a business intelligence and strategic pharmaceutical and health-care consulting firm.

Read the rest of CBC's story here

Editor's opinion:

"Hmm, I wonder if the drug industry with its incentive programs has anything to do with it..................."

In Newfoundland and Labrador an initiative for drug use among seniors has just been announced last week:

New program to help seniors taking medication in a safer way