Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Most Drugs Prescribed for Children Are Primarily Studied on Adults
Boston Globe story reprinted at PsycPORT - "Pediatricians are forced to engage in risky "trial-and-error" medicine when they give drugs to children because two-thirds of all drugs they routinely prescribe have never been adequately studied on kids, according to a study by Food and Drug Administration researchers to be published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. What's more, when certain drugs developed for adults were methodically tested in children, researchers found previously unknown safety risks, including higher incidences of death, seizures, and suicidal thoughts, according to new data contained in the study..."  
  

3 Schizophrenia Drugs May Raise Diabetes Risk, Study Says
Front page New York Times story - "hree drugs commonly prescribed for schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses increased patients' risk of developing diabetes when compared with older antipsychotic medications, researchers said yesterday, presenting the results from a long-awaited study of patients treated at veterans hospitals and clinics across the country. The drugs — Zyprexa, made by Eli Lilly, Risperdal, made by Jannsen Pharmaceutica, and Seroquel, made by AstraZeneca — were associated with higher rates of diabetes than older generation drugs for schizophrenia like Haldol, the study found. But the increased risk was statistically significant only for Zyprexa and Risperdal, the researchers said, possibly because of the smaller number of subjects who took Seroquel." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].