Word: paxil
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Baker is convinced Paxil is what killed her daughter, and that's what she'll tell a U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel meeting this week in Bethesda, Md. For years a small but vocal group of patients and doctors have insisted that certain antidepressants, including Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac and other medications known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), carry an unacceptable risk of antisocial behavior and suicide in kids who take them. Many clinicians and most pharmaceutical companies disagree. Major depression is a dangerous illness that in itself can lead to suicide, and they insist that the benefits...
...issue is coming to a head. By last December, the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the equivalent of the FDA, had declared Celexa, Effexor, Lexapro, Luvox, Paxil and Zoloft (but not Prozac) too risky for kids under 18. Two weeks ago, a task force of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology fired back, saying that despite the risk of potentially serious side effects, it's riskier to withhold the drugs...
...comes the FDA probe, which began with an investigation of Paxil launched in the fall of 2002. Last June the FDA cautioned doctors against prescribing the drug to young people because of a possible increase in suicidal thinking. In October the FDA issued a broader public-health advisory alerting physicians that in clinical trials, Paxil, along with about half a dozen other antidepressants, wasn't any more effective than a placebo at treating depression in kids. Indeed, no antidepressant other than Prozac has been formally approved for young people. But that's not the same as a ban. Once...
...British, on the other hand, actually banned the use of Paxil (under the drug's British trade name, Seroxat) for kids last June, and went on to ban the others in the following six months. Why the difference, when British authorities were looking at the same data as the FDA? One reason is that most studies on effectiveness aren't really definitive. They don't prove one way or the other whether the drugs work significantly better than placebos--and the Brits went with the more conservative interpretation. That, argues Dr. Graham Emslie, co-chair of the American panel...
...PAXIL DEBATE Do certain antidepressants trigger suicide in kids? A ban in Britain revives the controversy...