Wednesday, March 1, 2006; A06

Group Seeks Ban on Darvon and Darvocet

Darvon, Darvocet and related painkillers should be phased out and eventually banned, a watchdog group said yesterday in a government petition that cited the accidental deaths of at least 2,110 people between 1981 and 1999.

Several hundred more people have died accidentally after taking the prescription narcotics each year since, Public Citizen's Health Research Group said in the petition to the Food and Drug Administration. A roughly equal number used the drug to commit suicide.

Sidney M. Wolfe, the group's director, said the main active ingredient in the drugs, propoxyphene, is a relatively weak painkiller and poses an unacceptable toxic risk to the millions of patients prescribed it each year. Propoxyphene has been sold since 1957 and is made by several companies. Public Citizen first sought to ban it in 1978.

"This a black-and-white example of a drug where its risks far outweigh its benefits," Wolfe said.

The FDA does not comment on petitions, spokeswoman Laura Alvey said. The agency has 180 days to respond to petitioners.

The first skin patch to treat major depression in adults has won final approval to be sold in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration said.

Patients taking higher doses of the Emsam patch will have to follow strict dietary guidelines, but those taking the lowest dose will be free to eat cheese, smoked meats and other foods usually restricted with certain antidepressants.

The patch is made by Somerset Pharmaceuticals Inc., a joint venture of Mylan Laboratories Inc. and Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. Bristol-Myers Squibb has U.S. marketing rights for the patch.

Like other monoamine oxidase inhibitors, Emsam can carry the risk of high blood pressure if patients eat foods containing the compound tyramine. The patch offers a needed alternative for people who cannot take pills, but the warnings could discourage some doctors from prescribing it.

Survivors of the U.S. atomic bomb attacks in Japan still felt the effects of radiation exposure almost 60 years after the World War II bombings, signaling the results last longer than previously known, a study shows.

Doctors at Japan's Radiation Effects Research Foundation examined more than 4,000 survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and found almost 15 percent had developed thyroid-related cancer, tumors or cysts, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The growths were linked to radiation exposure in more than a quarter of the cases, the study found. It is a sign to people exposed to radiation that they are not necessarily in the clear after long periods of time have passed, John Boice, scientific director at the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville said.

Although doctors could not determine when the growths emerged, "we can say that radiation effects are still observed in atomic bomb survivors 55 to 58 years after radiation exposure," said Misa Imaizumi, author of the study.

The foundation, supported by the Japanese and U.S. governments, has been studying the effects of radiation in the bombing victims since 1950.

-- From News Services