From
Reuters:
Widely used
anticonvulsant drugs, including Pfizer's Neurontin and Novartis' Trileptal, may increase the risk of suicide, attempted suicide and violent death in patients taking them for the first time, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
Compared with Johnson & Johnson's generic epilepsy drug topiramate or Topamax, the team found an increased risk for suicide in new users of Neurontin, sold generically as gabapentin, GlaxoSmithKline's Lamictal or lamotrigine, Novartis' Trileptal or oxcarbazepine and Cephalon's Gabitril or tiagabine.
In one analysis, the team also found an increased risk of suicide with the drug valproate sold by Sanofi-Aventis as Epilim and as Depakine in the United States by Abbott Laboratories Inc.
In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required that all drugs in the anticonvulsant class carry a warning that they double the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, based on a so-called meta-analysis of nearly 200 clinical trials.
But the analysis was not large enough to show which drugs in the class were risky. And they are prescribed for a range of conditions.
Anticonvulsant drugs are chiefly used for patients with epilepsy, but the drugs have been aggressively promoted, in some cases for conditions they are not approved to treat, such as bipolar disorder, pain and migraine headaches.
While doctors are free to prescribe medicines as they see fit, drugmakers are only allowed to promote them for uses approved by the FDA.