Steve Anthony: True Canadian Pharmacy

Canada.com:
The side-effects of a popular asthma medication that has been sold in Canada for 12 years has been linked to suicide attempts and thoughts of suicide, as well as feelings of depression and hostility.
The July 2009 issue of the Canadian Adverse Reaction Newsletter from Health Canada cites montelukast sodium #8212; which has been marketed in Canada since 1997 as Singulair #8212; as having several connections to the alarming reactions.
!–more– Between its introduction to the Canadian market and Jan. 31, 2009, Singulair has been linked to two suicide attempts in Canada and 11 cases where users had thoughts of suicide or self-harm. In 29 other cases, 14 of which were labelled as serious adverse reactions, those affected suffered from depression, hostility or other psychosis. No deaths have been linked to the drug’s side-effects.

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Muscle damage related to the use of statins is not uncommon, but now researchers say tissue classified as injured by the cholesterol-lowering drugs can’t always be detected through a standard blood test.
Studies suggest 10 to 15 per cent of people taking statins experience some kind of muscle pain or weakness as a side effect of the treatment. A smaller but unknown percentage have stronger, persistent pain, called myopathy.
If doctors suspect !–more– statins are causing pain, they usually test for an enzyme in the blood known as creatin phosphokinase (CPK), which leaks from damaged muscles.
But a study by U.S. and Swiss researchers published in the July 7 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal found muscle damage even when tests came back negative for elevated levels of serum CPK.
The researchers looked at leg muscle biopsies from 44 people who had clinically diagnosed statin-associated myopathy and were either currently taking statins or had recently taken them.
They found that 25 of those patients also had muscle injury, in spite of normal blood tests. Only one patient with structural injury had a circulating level of creatine phosphokinase that was elevated more than the upper limit of normal, the researchers said.

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A labour arbitrator has reversed the firing of a veteran elementary-school janitor who sucker punched his boss, ruling that an experimental arthritis drug the man was taking as part of a clinical trial helped trigger the angry outburst.
It may be the first time in a Canadian legal hearing that pharmaceutical adverse effects have been successfully invoked to justify violent behaviour.
The custodian, Alf Clayfield, had put in 22 years of generally (more…)

Although past studies have shown drug side-effects to be the No. 1 reason seniors are hospitalized, most don’t understand the risks associated with adverse drug reactions or how to avoid them, according to research by the University of Victoria’s Centre on Aging.
Anthropology professor Peter Stephenson and a team of researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 20 seniors in Parksville and Qualicum Beach in the fall to gauge their attitudes toward (more…)

Nine years after vowing to find out why his healthy teenage daughter died while taking a popular prescription drug, a rookie MP is launching a campaign to persuade the Harper government to establish an independent drug safety agency in Canada.
Terence Young, Conservative MP for Oakville, Ont., is making his pitch for the agency in a new book that details his battle with “Big Pharma” and the health agencies and professionals that are charged with (more…)

Canadians aged 80 and older fill five times as many drug prescriptions a year as the average person, according to new data from Statistics Canada, helping explain why drug side effects are the No. 1 reason they visit emergency rooms.
In 2005, pharmacists filled an average of 74 prescriptions for each person over the age of 80, compared with an average of 14 prescriptions per Canadian, said the Statistics Canada study.
Typically, seniors on multiple (more…)

Biogen Idec Canada Inc., in consultation with Health Canada, would like to inform you that previously communicated safety information regarding post-marketing reports of PML in patients receiving TYSABRI® (natalizumab) monotherapy is now included in the Canadian Product Monograph. PML is a known risk of TYSABRI therapy.
TYSABRI is a humanized monoclonal antibody and is currently authorized as monotherapy (i.e. single disease-modifying agent) (more…)

A widely used anti-HIV drug could raise heart attack risk by encouraging blood clots to form, according to a new study by Irish scientists that was unveiled at a major international conference in Canada last week.
The Dublin-based researchers showed that patients on the anti-viral drug Abacavir have stickier blood platelets – which can clump to form clots – than patients who are not taking that drug as part of their therapy.
HIV infection (more…)