Another criminal an atty. got off for committing a violent crime! Sickening!
LONDON (Reuters) - Canadian scientists warned Friday that the latest generation of antidepressants could cause stomach and intestinal bleeding in elderly patients.
Dr. Carl van Walraven and researchers at Ottawa Hospital said people in their 80s and those with previous bleeding problems face the highest risk from the drugs, known as serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
"The risk of upper gastrointestinal bleeding in elderly and depressed patients increases with antidepressants having the greatest extent of inhibition of serotonin re-uptake," van Walraven said in a report in the British Medical Journal.
SSRIs work by preventing the body from re-absorbing serotonin, an important message-carrying chemical linked with mood. They are among the most widely prescribed drugs and the standard treatment for depression in many countries.
Eli Lilly and Co's Prozac and GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Paxil are among the most popular SSRIs.
Van Walraven and his team compared data on 314,000 people over 65 who had been taking SSRIs between 1992 and 1998 and hospital admissions for stomach bleeding.
They found that the more powerful the drug, the greater the chance of bleeding. People with peptic ulcers had the highest risks.
Van Walraven said this research supports a study by Spanish scientists who also linked SSRIs with a raised risk of bleeding.
"We believe that our study is valid and provides new information that is useful to clinicians," van Walraven added.
In August, lawyers in the United States launched a major lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline on behalf of 35 people who said they suffered withdrawal reactions to Paxil.
The suit said the British drug giant had deliberately failed to warn people about the drug's addictive traits.
The drug also hit the headlines in June when the Guardian newspaper reported that the family of a man who killed his wife, daughter and granddaughter before committing suicide had been awarded $6.4 million by a U.S. jury that said Paxil was largely to blame. <<<Another criminal an atty. got off for committing a violent crime! Sickening!
