More Problems with Prescription Drugs
Over the last few years, Americans have been reading reports that medications are not always what they're cracked up to be. Here's a story by Reuters about a class of antiacid medications (hat tip to Suburban Guerilla):
There are drugs that clearly aren't worth the risk and are eventually taken off the market. And then there are drugs that have side effects that aren't noticed at first. The proton pump antiacids may be in the second group where one has to weigh the risks and benefits.
I've been noticing that these studies tend to be very broad in their interpretation and that fits with a growing trend in medicine of late where one size to seems to fit all, partly because drug companies make their profits from large groups of people who use a medication (if the population that might benefit from a drug is too small, the drug, in fact, might not be developed) and partly because there doesn't seem to be the time and money to find out what's best for different groups of people.
Addressing the second point above, it's important to remember that different people may have different reasons for having acid problems. This can affect how we see the results of a study. For example, maybe most people handle the anti-acids reasonably well without hip fractures (they're relatively rare though more common in late old age). But maybe the people who have the most likelihood of hip fracture have a connective tissue disorder that is in some way related to excessive acid or sensitivity to acid. In other words, it may be a connective tissue disorder itself that needs to be addressed within a subgroup of people who take antiacid medications. Understanding how some of the broadly used medications affect different groups of people is an issue that is only slowly being addressed more fully by doctors.
Medicine has come far in the last fifty years, but it it still has much to do, particularly in the area of orphan diseases and also a number of quality of life issues. Legislation may eventually be needed to push drug companies towards developing more specific drugs (or simply protocols to mitigate problems) rather than relying on medications that are designed to have such broad therapueutic brushstrokes.
(Note: a good movie on the difficulty of developing more specific medications for an orphan disease is Lorenzo's Oil.)
Long-term use of popular anti-heartburn drugs that block stomach acid production increases the risk of hip fractures in adults over 50, perhaps because the drugs inhibit calcium absorption, researchers said on Tuesday.
The drug class, called proton pump inhibitors because they shut down stomach acid production, are used by millions who suffer from acid-related stomach problems including ulcers and gastro-esophageal reflux.
(snip)
Some of the brand-name versions of the heartburn- and ulcer-fighting drugs include AstraZeneca's Prilosec and Nexium, TAP Pharmaceutical's Prevacid, Eisai Inc.'s Aciphex, and Wyeth's Protonix.
There are drugs that clearly aren't worth the risk and are eventually taken off the market. And then there are drugs that have side effects that aren't noticed at first. The proton pump antiacids may be in the second group where one has to weigh the risks and benefits.
I've been noticing that these studies tend to be very broad in their interpretation and that fits with a growing trend in medicine of late where one size to seems to fit all, partly because drug companies make their profits from large groups of people who use a medication (if the population that might benefit from a drug is too small, the drug, in fact, might not be developed) and partly because there doesn't seem to be the time and money to find out what's best for different groups of people.
Addressing the second point above, it's important to remember that different people may have different reasons for having acid problems. This can affect how we see the results of a study. For example, maybe most people handle the anti-acids reasonably well without hip fractures (they're relatively rare though more common in late old age). But maybe the people who have the most likelihood of hip fracture have a connective tissue disorder that is in some way related to excessive acid or sensitivity to acid. In other words, it may be a connective tissue disorder itself that needs to be addressed within a subgroup of people who take antiacid medications. Understanding how some of the broadly used medications affect different groups of people is an issue that is only slowly being addressed more fully by doctors.
Medicine has come far in the last fifty years, but it it still has much to do, particularly in the area of orphan diseases and also a number of quality of life issues. Legislation may eventually be needed to push drug companies towards developing more specific drugs (or simply protocols to mitigate problems) rather than relying on medications that are designed to have such broad therapueutic brushstrokes.
(Note: a good movie on the difficulty of developing more specific medications for an orphan disease is Lorenzo's Oil.)
Labels: drug industry, healthcare
posted by Poechewe at 2:53 PM
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