Health Information Blog

Being a chiropractor in San Diego, I am constantly as ked which is better. I obviously often promote alternative medicine, but, like it or not, some health crises require some form of life-saving medication. The question that you have to consider when swallowing the pills is just how safe are your prescription pills? Your physician prescribes them. They are also FDA approved. But are they really safe? Studies are regularly showing that they may not be as safe as you would like them to be. Even aspirin is not 100% safe. Whether you want to accept the fact or not, whenever you take a medication, you are weighing the potential benefits against the possibility that the medicine may hurt you in the short or long term.

As a case in point, Celebrex is a prescription drug for arthritis. When information was released in August 2001 that Celebrex and a painkiller, Vioxx, might be associated with an increased risk of heart attack, users’ reactions ranged from nervous to very alarmed. Why are some medications on the market if they pose such a potential health threat to their consumers?

Maryann Napoli, Associate Director of the Center for Medical Consumers in New York City. She states in her Health Facts Report that the FDA requires tests before any prescription drug goes on the market. But tests typically last no longer than several months. Consequently, a drug’s safety remains uncertain until it has been on the market for a lot of years. Not only is the drug testing periods short, but potential unenthusiastic side effects of treatment drugs are often determined in only tiny groups of people.

Pharmaceutical companies also often publicize a drug before all of its side effects are known. A study was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that tracked the new warnings and recalls of prescription drugs after they became available. Nearly one out of five new prescription drugs caused a serious side effect that wasn’t apparent during the testing phase. Basically, whenever you take a drug, you are part of the scientific process - the data collection phase. The longer the experiment runs the more certain you can be of the results based on cumulative data.

The study reported in the journal of the American Medical Association also confirmed the inadequacy of the post-market reporting system for adverse drug reactions. The following reports why. Physicians and hospitals under report adverse drug reactions under the voluntary system run by the Food and Drug Administration. This was reported in a study from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Inspector General. Between June 1997and May 1998, of the over thirteen thousand adverse drug reaction reports submitted to the FDA, just over two thousand of them came from the nation’s estimated 740,000 medical doctors.

So how often does a new medicine get removed from the market? Karen E. Lasser, MD of Harvard Medical School and associated colleagues studied 548 prescription drugs accepted by the FDA between 1975 and 1999. They found that 20% had been ether removed or got new “black box” warnings. These black box warnings are warnings that are required by the FDA to be placed on drug packaging that indicate potentially severe or life-threatening side effects about serious adverse effects. Dr. Lasser and her colleagues observed that only half of all newly discovered grave adverse drug reactions are found and documented in the Physicians’ Desk Reference within 7 years after the drug is approved. Some of the medicines in this study initially had black box warnings and were later removed off the market as more adverse effects were reported.

For example the antacid Propulsid was on the market six years before being withdrawn because it had harmful effects on the heart when taken with some other drugs. Another withdrawn drug, the antihistamine Terfenadine, was prescribed for a dozen years until a similar problem was identified in this drug.

Here is how to protect you from the side effects of medication. Ask your doctor how long the drug has been on the market. Don’t be one of the first people to suffer a previously unknown side effect of a medication. If you must take a prescription medication, opt for one that has been tested for many years. Generally after many years, lots of side effects are well known. Ask your physician about drug interactions associated with the medication. If you are currently taking any other medications, ask if the medication will react badly to the new one. Some drugs have the potential to save thousands of lives or relieve untold suffering, but you must use them wisely!

Learn more about health. Stop by the back pain website site where you can get free information about spinal decompression and what it can do for you.