Oh, look – 150 completed suicides from Chantix users “improperly” reported to the FDA!
I’ll say this again: If your doctor prescribes a new drug (and really, whenever possible, you should ask for a drug that’s at least 10 years old), go online and find the bulletin boards where users report the side effects they experience. Those communities were reporting problems with Chantix long before the medical community figured it out.
It’s important, however, that you read all the comments. When you read the rest, you often find the side effects go away in a few weeks, or that a drug interaction was responsible. Some people (like me!) have strong reactions to just about any drug, and you have to use common sense.
The kinds of stories coming out about Chantix were unusual and scary. Someone should have noticed sooner.
The medical community likely knew, unless they don’t read the journals. I heard from an insider that Chantix was known to destroy cell mitochondria, cause bizarre dreams, personality changes and suicidal ideation, among a whole list of other problems. Just like Avandia (which was published in NEJM as potentially causing heart attack in 50% of patients), many drugs are still brought to market, because it’s cheaper to allow patients to foot the bill for long-term observation of effects.
For example, the commercials report that for clinical trials (of three months), the drug was effective for somewhere less than 50% of subjects.
The questions then become, did they ONLY run trials for 3 month spans? If so, how can the impact of cumulative effects, say, over a year, be understood by either doctor or patient? Just a guess: Likely, the results beyond 3 months were too unfavorable to report.