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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Govt bans common painkiller

Govt bans common painkiller

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published Published on Jun 12, 2013   modified Modified on Jun 12, 2013
-The Telegraph


The Union health ministry has banned the manufacture and sale of a pain-reliever called dextropropoxyphene (DPPP) amid steadily growing concerns worldwide that this opioid analgesic drug poses several serious health risks, including heart damage.

The health ministry, in a drug withdrawal notification, has suspended the manufacture, distribution and sale of all medicines containing DPPP saying the central government has determined that this drug is likely to involve risk to humans and safer alternatives are available.

The notification, issued on May 23, comes nearly four years after Indian doctors had warned that the drug has a high addictive potential and documented a disproportionately high rate of epileptic seizures among patients abusing DPPP.

Several pharmaceutical companies in India manufacture DPPP that is sold under different brand names and is primarily used in the treatment of mild or moderate pain. Some companies also sell the drug in combination with other compounds such as paracetamol or dicyclomine.

The European Medicines Agency had recommended DPPP's withdrawal across the European Union in 2009, saying the drug's risks, particularly the risk of a potential fatal overdose, are higher than its benefits. In 2010, the US Food and Drug Administration had banned the continued prescribing and use of DPPP after a study suggested it can lead to serious toxicity to the heart even when used at approved therapeutic doses.

Doctors in India have also documented the addictive potential and associated adverse effects of DPPP, a weak opioid abused as a psychoactive substance by drug users who find it easier to procure such compounds than narcotics like heroin. "It's truly heartening to hear the government has acted to ban this drug - better late than never," Debasish Basu, a professor of psychiatry at the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, told The Telegraph.

Basu and his colleagues have documented both the addictive potential of DPPP and the incidence of epileptic seizures among drug addicts who had switched to DPPP. In a study published in 2009 in the American Journal on Addictions, Basu and his colleagues had analysed the case files of 312 patients with a history of DPPP abuse and observed that 63 patients (20 per cent) had suffered epileptic seizures that appeared related to their use of DPPP. In contrast, the rate of epileptic seizures among patients with a history of abuse of other opioid substances ranged between 0.4 per cent to 4 per cent.

When the researchers presented their data on the addiction potential of DPPP and the high rates of epileptic seizures among DPPP abusers at an international conference in Australia, one participating delegate asked why the Indian government had not taken action to ban the drug. "We could only say - ask the government," one doctor said.

In 1995, the health ministry had banned the manufacture and sale of combinations of DPPP with any other drug other than anti-spasmodic agents and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents. But products containing DPPP and paracetamol continued to be sold.

"It is strange - paracetamol does not fall in the category of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents," one senior doctor in a government hospital said.


The Telegraph, 12 June, 2013, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130612/jsp/nation/story_16998338.jsp#.UbgQpNjcjco


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