A new study on Chantix done by the Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and published online in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS One, conflicts with recents studies done by the FDA.
"Pfizer’s smoking cessation drug Chantix carries too many risks and should only be tried when other treatments fail, researchers said on Wednesday".
"Chantix was eight times more likely to be linked with a reported case of suicidal behavior or depression than other nicotine replacement products, such as the nicotine patch, they said".
The findings contradicted two studies released last month by the Food and Drug Administration that showed Chantix (sold as Champix outside the United States) did not increase the risk of being hospitalized for psychiatric problems such as depression.
The agency at the time acknowledged that those studies were flawed because they were too small to identify rare events and they only captured cases that were severe enough to land people in the hospital.
"Our study contradicts the implications of a recent review by the FDA showing no difference in psychiatric hospitalizations between varenicline and nicotine replacement patches," said Dr. Curt Furberg, professor of Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, co-author of the study published online in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS One.
"The FDA hospitalization studies were flawed because they could not capture most of the serious psychiatric side effects, including suicide, depression, aggression and assaults. These can be catastrophic events but do not normally result in hospitalization," Furberg said in a statement.
FDA is heavily influenced by Big Pharma, they have forgotten their responsibility to the public.
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