The New Antidepressant Warnings: Not Enough to Prevent Further Harm.
After Finally Issuing Warnings 16 Years Late, British and U.S. Authorities Fail to Tell Doctors and Patients How to Actually Prevent Serious Side Effects, Leaving Millions at Further Risk. What Should Be Done?
On March 22, 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration issued an advisory for the use of antidepressants in children
and adults.1 This advisory, which followed
a U.K. advisory, was long overdue. Sixteen years overdue: Prozac was marketed
and immediately revealed problems in 1988. The new warnings covered 10
top-selling antidepressant drugs: Celexa (citalopram), Effexor (venlafaxine),
Lexapro (escitalopram), Luvox (fluvoxamine), Remeron (mirtazapine), (Paxil
(paroxetine), Prozac (fluoxetine), Serzone (nefazodone), Wellbutrin (buproprion),
and Zoloft (sertraline). The advisories finally warned doctors that these
drugs are clearly linked to severe side effects, but they failed to provide
vital information about how doctors can prevent severe reactions from
occurring.
1. Key Information Omitted
First, isn't it amazing that the FDA had
to caution "physicians, their patients, and families and caregivers
of patients about the need to closely monitor both adults and children
with depression." Aren't doctors supposed to pay close attention
to their patients, especially when starting new medications? Aren't they
supposed to follow-up in a timely fashion? The FDA was right to advise
this, but the fact it was necessary is a stinging critique of today's
healthcare system.
In fact, aren't doctors supposed to warn
patients and children's parents about possible side effects and what to
do if they occur? It's called informed consent, a basic right of every
patient. Yet very few medication patients receive informed consent these
days, which is a big part of the antidepressant
problem.
Why is close scrutiny necessary? Because,
as the FDA states, these antidepressants can provoke "anxiety, agitation,
panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia
(severe restlessness), hypomania, and mania." It is difficult to
believe that 16 years after Prozac's entry, many doctors still don't know
this. So when these reactions occur, rather than reducing the dosage or
stopping the drug, some doctors actually increase the dose, worsening
the reactions and sometimes triggering destructive behavior.
The British advisory in early March addressed
this important point: "There is evidence that increasing the dose
in this situation may be detrimental." Yet the FDA omitted this important
warning, which is a huge oversight because doctors will continue to make
the same mistake. The fact is, many doctors don't know how to prescribe
antidepressants properly. One reason is that the drug industry, with its
saturation advertising and 90,000 sales reps, has vigorously pushed antidepressants
at family practitioners, pediatricians, gynecologists, and anyone else
who can pen a prescription. Many of these doctors are inadequately trained
to handle antidepressants, which are tricky drugs because patients respond
so differently to them. This is why the lead author of a new study challenging
the effectiveness and safety of these antidepressants in children2A
told the New York Times, "We strongly want to say that non-child
psychiatrists should not be initiating the prescribing" of SSRI antidepressants
for children or adolescents.
2. Failure to Define the Role of
Antidepressants in Anxiety Disorders
The drug industry's aggressive marketing
methods are no different than other industries pushing their products.
The more, the better. To accomplish this, the drug companies have convinced
doctors that these drugs are not only useful for depression, but that
some antidepressants are also useful for anxiety symptoms. Yet, these
drugs are nothing like Valium or Xanax. Antidepressants have no immediate
anxiety-reducing effects. To the contrary, they can actually cause severe
anxiety, agitation, insomnia, mania, and the other reactions the FDA listed.
Some antidepressants do have a longer-term role in treating anxiety disorders
such as panic or obsessive-compulsive disorders, but their effects take
weeks to work. And some patients, especially panic sufferers, are extremely
sensitive to these drugs and must be started with very low doses. The
U.S. and U.K. advisories say nothing about this.
3. Failure to Inform Doctors and Patients
about Lower, Safer, Effective Antidepressant Doses
This is the most egregious omission of the
U.S. and U.K. advisories. These agencies know that antidepressant doses
one-half and one-quarter the standard starting amounts work.3-5
Dr. Robert Temple, the FDA's top drug expert, acknowledged this about
Prozac in his debate with me on March 26, 2004, in front of 400 pharmacologists
at the meeting of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.
Lower doses of Zoloft, Paxil, Effexor, Wellbutrin, and the others also
work for millions of people.
There's a reason that serious reactions,
as the U.K. advisory acknowledged, occur when patients are first prescribed
these drugs. The reason is that the standard, one-size-fits-all starting
doses are too strong for millions of people. These doses are derived from
averaged results from studies, which may be meaningful statistically,
but are misleading when treating individual patients. Giving all patients
the same standard starting doses of antidepressants is like giving all
shoe purchasers a size 10 and then telling them to come back in a month
if the fit isn't right. Such methods ignore the obvious broad variation
among us and are guaranteed to provoke problems.
As every medical textbook states, variation in medication response isn't the exception, but the rule. Yet the drug companies -- and regulatory agencies -- ignore this basic medical principle because they are more interested in pushing new drugs to the widest populations possible. The result: high sales -- and high side-effect statistics. Medication side effects cause more than 106,000 deaths and 1 million hospitalizations annually, and are the fourth leading cause of death in America. More than 75% of these adverse effects are dose-related:6 the problem isn't the drugs themselves, but excessively strong doses. Consider what Dr. Carl Peck, a former director of the FDA's drug division, said recently:
"It's long been known that for individual subjects the dosage listed on a drug label is not necessarily the right one.7"
And what my friend and counterpart, Dr. Alexander Herxheimer of the U.K., wrote:
"Drugs are often introduced at a dose that will be effective in around 90% of the target population, because this helps market penetration. The 25% of patients who are most sensitive to the drug get much more than they need.8"
This is why so many people react so severely to the initial doses of antidepressants: the drug-company recommended, FDA-approved initial doses are too strong for millions of people.
There are studies proving that much lower
doses work, some conducted by drug companies. When one of my patients
got psychotic in 1988 after just three doses of Prozac, I searched the
medical literature. I'd prescribed her the standard 20-mg dose that the
drug rep assured me was the lowest, safest dose. Yet I found a large study,
conducted by Prozac's manufacturer, showing that just 5 mg -- 75% less
medication -- helped 54% of patients.9
But this information was omitted from the package insert, PDR, advertising,
or rep's info. Despite many subsequent articles on the effectiveness of
low-dose Prozac,10-14 today most patients
are still started at the 20-mg dose of Prozac and similarly strong doses
of other antidepressants -- and many people react like my patient.
FDA: A Reactive Model Instead of a Preventive
Model
Some people do require strong doses of these drugs. But others don't and
get severe reactions when treated in this one-size-fits-all way. The FDA
and British agencies know this. Why didn't they advise us? Or would they
look bad by finally admitting that the doses they originally approved
were wrong?
Some FDA officers already acknowledge the
problem. FDA Officer James Cross stated in 2002: "We've seen a lot
of situations where drugs are approved by the F.D.A. and subsequent important
information about their optimal dose is not determined until afterward.7"
Antidepressants are a perfect example. Yet the FDA still won't admit this
publicly and has again failed to offer a proactive, preventive approach
for patients and doctors. Instead, we are left with the same reactive
model that allows patients to get serious side effects. And some doctors
will still misdiagnose the reactions, some will increase drug doses, and
other doctors, not knowing what to do, will switch patients from one strong
antidepressant to another and another with the same negative results.
This is a wasteful, outdated method that does not put patients' safety
first.
Solutions
What must be done? The 16-year controversy about
antidepressant medications was entirely avoidable. The problem isn't the
drugs, but a system that perpetuates a methodology guaranteed to cause
unnecessary harm. Even with the new warnings, problems are going to continue
and patients will become ever more fearful of using these drugs even when
they are indicated. I agree with Dr. Laurence Greenhill, a professor of
clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, who told the New York Times
that neither side of this intense debate had a monopoly on the truth:
"I think that these medications are neither as much of a silver bullet
as the advocates would have it nor as terrible as the critics would say.2B"
So how do we use these drugs appropriately and safely?
In earlier newsletters, I outlined a 6-point plan for allowing people to get antidepressant therapy with minimum risk. Here's an abbreviated version:
1. For serious depressions, standard antidepressant doses should be used with close monitoring.
2. Most depressive disorders are not acute, so patients must be given the option of starting with lower, safer, effective doses. The failure of the drug industry and regulatory agencies to provide this information constitutes a failure of informed consent. Patients and their doctors deserve the opportunity to discuss different doses and treatment options.
3. Doctors must become more knowledgeable about how to prescribe antidepressants, follow patients, and recognize and handle side effects. Doctors who prescribe antidepressants should be required to take a brief course or prove competence in using these drugs effectively and safely and in informing patients about potential risks.
4. Drug companies must define the lowest effective doses of antidepressants and must make this information readily available to patients and doctors.
5. The FDA must initiate policies requiring drug companies to develop the lowest, safest doses of not only antidepressants, but of all drugs.
6. The FDA must require doctors to report all serious antidepressant reactions. This is the only way we will learn the full scope of the problem.
Maybe all of these steps aren't practical
today, but in a healthy healthcare system they would be automatic. Lower,
safer doses would be encouraged. Doctors would follow patients closely
and would handle side effects effectively. It's not asking a lot.
The Dose Makes the Difference
Paracelsus said it six centuries ago: "The
right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy." A standard medical
school textbook, Goth's Medical Pharmacology, says the same thing:
"Many adverse reactions probably arise from the failure to tailor
the dosage of drugs to widely different individual needs.15"
Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you need a low dose or high
dose -- what matters is that you get the right dose for you. Except in
emergencies or other acute situations, there usually is no reason to start
with the strong, standard, drug-company recommended doses of antidepressant
drugs.
That's why I've long advocated a start-low
go-slow approach for most patients. Even if you ultimately need a higher
antidepressant dosage, starting low and increasing gradually is a good
strategy because it triggers fewer side effects than starting immediately
with a high dose.
The issue here is about informed consent.
It is about the failure of the drug industry to provide drugs to be used
flexibly according to each patient's needs and tolerances. It is about
allowing marketing strategies for maximizing sales to override medical
science that maximizes safety. The FDA and U.K. advisories are welcome
steps forward, although long overdue and incomplete. New advisories
should be issued that explain why so many serious reactions occur at the
beginning of treatment and should inform patients and healthcare providers
about low-dose options that can actually prevent these reactions.
Other Recent Articles on Antidepressants Reactions
In the Apr.-June 2004 E-Newsletter
The Underlying Cause of Suicides and Homicides with SSRI Antidepressants:
Is It the Drugs, the Doctors, or the Drug Companies? How a dysfunctional
medical-pharmaceutical complex causes and perpetuates unnecessary harm.
In the Jan.-Mar. 2004 E-Newsletter
An Open Letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Serotonin-Enhancing
Antidepressants in Youngsters: A 6-Point Solution That Makes Sense Scientifically.
Antidepressant Side Effects: In A New York Times Exposé,
A Doctor Describes Her Own Reaction To An Antidepressant Drug.
But She Doesn't Explain Why Antidepressant Side Effects Occur and How
to Prevent Them. This Article Does.
In the Oct.-Dec. 2003 E-Newsletter
Suicides and Homicides in Patients Taking Paxil, Prozac, and Zoloft:
Why They Keep Happening -- And Why They Will Continue. Underlying
Causes That Continue to Be Ignored by Mainstream Medicine and the Media.
And in:
Cohen, JS. Over Dose: The Case
Against The Drug Companies. Prescription Drugs, Side Effects, and Your
Health. Tarcher/Putnam, New York: October 2001. (Highly recommended
by all major reviewers including the Journal of the American Medical
Association.)
References
1. FDA Talk Paper. FDA Issues Public Health Advisory on Cautions for Use
of Antidepressants in Adults and Children. U.S. Food and Drug Administration,
March 22, 2004:www.fda.gov\.
2. Braddock, CH, Edwards, KA, Hasenberg, NM, Laidley, TL, Levinson, W.
Informed Decision Making in Outpatient Practice: Time to Get Back to Basics.
JAMA 1999;282:2313-20.
2A. Jureidini, JN, Doecke, CJ, Mansfield, PR, et al. Efficacy and safety
of antidepressants for children and adolescents. BMJ 2004;328:
879-883.
2B. Harris, G. Study advises against drugs for children in depression.
New York Times, Apr. 9, 2004:nytimes.com.
3. Cohen, JS. Dose Discrepancies between the Physicians' Desk Reference
and the Medical Literature, and Their Possible Role in the High Incidence
of Dose-Related Adverse Drug Events. Archives of Internal Medicine,
April 9, 2001:161:957-64.
4. Cohen, JS. Adverse drug effects, compliance, and the initial doses
of antihypertensive drugs recommended by the Joint National Committee
vs. the Physicians' Desk Reference. Archives of Internal Medicine
2001;161:880-85.
5. Cohen, JS. Do Standard Doses of Frequently Prescribed Drugs Cause Preventable
Adverse Effects in Women? JAMWA 2002;57:105-110.
6. Lazarou, J, Pomeranz, BH, Corey, PN. Incidence of adverse drug reactions
in hospitalized patients: a meta-analysis of prospective studies. JAMA
1998;279(15):1200-5.
7. Zuger, A. Caution: That dose may be too high. New York Times,
September 17, 2002:nytimes.com.
8. Herxheimer A. How much drug in the tablet? Lancet 1991;337:346-8.
9. Wernicke, JF, Dunlop, SR, Dornseif, BE, et al. Low-dose fluoxetine
therapy for depression. Psychopharmacology Bulletin 1988;24(1):183-188.
10. Schatzberg AF, Dessain E, O'Neil P, Katz DL, Cole JO. Recent studies
on selective serotonergic antidepressants: trazodone, fluoxetine, and
fluvoxamine. Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology 1987;7(6):44S-49S.
11. Salzman C. Practical considerations in the pharmacologic treatment
of depression in the elderly. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
1990;59(1 Suppl):40-43.
12. Schatzberg AF. Dosing strategies for antidepressant agents. Journal
of Clinical Psychiatry 1991:52(5suppl):14-20.
13. Cain, JW. Poor response to fluoxetine: underlying depression, serotonergic
overstimulation, or a "therapeutic window"? Journal of Clinical
Psychiatry 1992;53(8):272-277.
14. Louie, AK, Lewis, TB, Lannon, MD. Use of low-dose fluoxetine in major
depression and panic disorder. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
1993;54(1):435-438.
15. Clark, WG, Brater, DC, Johnson, AR. Goth's Medical Pharmacology.
13th Edition. St. Louis: The C.V. Mosby Company, 1992.
NOTE TO READERS: The purpose of this E-Letter is solely informational and educational. Theinformation herein should not be considered to be a substitute forthe direct medical advice of your doctor, nor is it meant to encourage the diagnosis or treatment of any illness, disease, or other medical problem by laypersons. If you are under a physician's care for any condition, he or she can advise you whether the information in this E-Letter is suitable for you. Readers should not make any changes in drugs, doses, or any other aspects of their medical treatment unless specifically directed to do so by their own doctors.
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