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Drug maker Wyeth has sent a two-page letter to doctors to warn them that its Effexor antidepressant may be more likely to cause children to consider suicide, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The company said it decided to notify doctors as a precaution, the paper reported.
“It’s important safety information, and we thought it was important enough to provide in a letter to health-care physicians,” Wyeth spokesman Douglas Petkus told the Journal. A Wyeth spokesperson was not immediately available to comment to Reuters.
The warning comes two months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned about GlaxoSmithKline Paxil use for children under 18 amid data suggesting it may lead to suicidal thoughts, said the paper. Petkus said Wyeth’s warning was not related to the Paxil worries, according to the Journal.
Wyeth told the newspaper the data that prompted the warning letter were from several studies and that some were continuing, though it did not specify how many studies it had conducted on the drug and children, or how recent the studies were.
As of July, Effexor was Wyeth’s best-selling product. The drug, which regulates two brain messenger chemicals, is becoming increasingly popular for patients who have failed to benefit from older therapies such as Eli Lilly & Co.’s Prozac.
Effexor, which has not been approved for children, has been shown to be more effective than many standard depression treatments although it has been linked to more side effects.
©2003 Reuters Limited.
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