Drug Warning And Defences

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30028, 12 January 1963, Page 11

Drug Warning And Defences

(N.ZJPA..-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, January 11. Two British doctors today denied the drug, meclozine, caused foetal abnormality in pregnant women.

In Australia the DirectorGeneral of Health, Dr. W. G. Refshauge, has warned doctors against using the drugs preludin and stelazine, for expectant mothers. The English doctors; from the department of clinical research of British Drug Houses, Ltd., wrote to the "British Medical Journal,” which recently published a warning that the drug Ancoloxin (meclozine and pyridoxine) might be unsafe if given in early pregnancy. Cases' both in Britain and the Commonwealth bad been investigated and no pattern of abnormality had emerged such as a person would expect from a drug-induced condition, the doctors said. The two men. Dr. A David and Dr. A H. Goodspeed, added: “The occurrence of meclozine administration and foetal abnormality in the same pregnancy is, in our opinion, purely coincidental, and an expression of nothing more than the widespread use of a drug which has been taken in early pregnancy by an estimated 10 million women throughout the world.”

Reports Continue In the same issue. Dr. I. G. Watson, who gave the original warning in the journal, said reports about drugs and malformed babies continued to reach the British College of General Practitioners, where he is attached to the epidemic observation unit

Dr. Watson said the present total stood at meclozine 29, Ancoloxin 25 and Ancotan (meclozine) four. There

were four reports with fibazine, three reports each about mornidine, avomine and pyridoxine, and lees than three reports about another 14 anti-emetic or sedative drugs.

He said: “The proper course therefore would appear to be to suspend judgment, while seeking more significant information about either the safety or the possible dangers of the drugs in question.” Australian Warning Dr. Refshauge warned against the prescribing of preludin and stelazine in today’s issue of the “Medical Journal of Australia.”

Preludin, a weight-reducing drug, and stelazine, used in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. are suspected of having caused deformities in unborn babies.

Dr. Refshauge quoted Canadian reporta on defonnities attributed to the drugs. Preludin was banned in Italy after a mother who bad taken it gave birth to two deformed babies and the drug

manufacturer wrote to every doctor in West Germany and France warning against the use of the drug by pregnant women.

Stelazine was suspected of having caused five out of eight deformities In Canada. Dr. Befabauge said stelazine would not be removed from the hrt of pharmaceutical

benefits, because its use as a t benefit was restricted to pensioners and patients with a ; psychiatric condition. It was not likely it would be used to a large extent by pregnant women, he added.