Public Citizen, a national consumer advocacy organization, has renewed its call to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to immediately withdraw the prescription diet drug Meridia from the market–due to the rising number of deaths and serious adverse reactions associated with Meridia.
“The reactions are serious, the number of victims is rising rapidly and the effectiveness in treating obesity is meager,” Sidney Wolfe, MD., director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, said in a second petition to the FDA. “The FDA is in possession of evidence sufficiently clear to immediately ban this serious health hazard, known to cause dangerous increases in blood pressure.”
The consumer group in its original March 2002 petition cited 19 deaths from cardiovascular disease and 61 serious cardiovascular adverse reactions resulting in hospitalization in patients taking Meridia.
Since then, a subsequent review of the FDA database (covering the past 18 months) has revealed an additional 30 heart-related deaths in people using Meridia – for a total of 49 cardiovascular deaths. Ten of the 19 cardiac deaths were in people 50 or younger, including three women under the age of 30.
In addition to the cardiovascular deaths, there are now a total of 124 cardiovascular adverse reactions serious enough to require hospitalization.
A troubling new category, which was not addressed in Public Citizen’s original petition, is the impact of Meridia on the developing fetus.
When pregnant women take the drug, the new analysis indicates a link to spontaneous abortions, stillbirths and congenital malformations, including those of the heart and central nervous system in the fetus.
The cardiovascular birth defects seen in four babies are consistent with those seen in animal studies, prior to approval of the drug.
“There is no justification in continuing to market a drug that provides minimal weight reduction while increasing the likelihood of injury and death,” Wolfe said.
(via Public Citizen)
{ 2 comments }
Thanks to this article I am not going to go on Meridia, but instead change my lifestyle and eating habits! Thank You!
I would like to know what other meds these patients were on. Additionally, what was their likelihood of suffering from a condition leading to their death prior to being on Meridia? I would think that due to the patient type that takes Meridia, such risks would be evident. Drugs such as Meridia help solve the problem rather than making the situation worse.
I doubt we’re getting the whole story from this article.
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