Three Deaths Reported After Use Of Pill

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32392, 3 September 1970, Page 1

Three Deaths Reported After Use Of Pill

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, September 2.

Twenty-nine cases of thrombo-embolism, three of them fatal, occurred in New Zealand this year after the use of oral contraceptives, according to the annual report of the Committee on Adverse Drug Reactions, published in the latest “New Zealand Medical Journal.”

“A number of the reported cases were of a bizarre character, commented on by pathologists as being quite atypical of any they had seen in young women before the introduction of oral contraceptives,” the report said.

“The association of oral contraceptives with hypertension has also received a good deal of interest lately, and in one well-documented case fatal malignant hypertension was thought to have been importantly contributed to by an oral contraceptive."

The total number of adverse drug reactions reported to the committee during the year ended March, 1970, was 425, of which 22 had a fatal outcome. Five cases of congenita) abnormalities were reported, three in infants of epileptic mothers taking anti-convul-sant drugs for some years and throughout pregnancy. “Attention has been drawn to a considerable number of reactions to Hong Kong influenza vaccine,” says the report A number of these involved serious aggravation of asthma in known asthmatics, three of these proving fatal. In one patient asthma appeared to be induced for the first time, although he was known to

be allergic to eggs. There was one severe case of encephalitis. After a suggestion that drug dependence might occut with fenfluramine, a drug which featured for the first time with a variety of reactions, the report requested that practitioners notify any instances of drug dependence with this agent, and indeed with all drugs. Anti - inflammatory drugs were responsible for a considerable number of serious reactions. Six cases were reported of

reactions to phenacetin, four of them associated with nephropathy (kidney disease), and all involving also aspirin and codeine.

Among antibiotics, penicillins were responsible for a large number of reactions, particularly ampicillin. Skin rashes both 6f a typical allergic character and of a nature now appreciated to be peculiar to ampicillin were reported in 34 cases. Generalised anaphylaxis (allergy) from oral administration of ampicillin was also reported, “a hazard which is 'not usually bargained for.”

Sulphonamides were responsible for a number of severe systemic as well as dermatological reactions, and one death. Of the 425 cases of adverse drug reactions reported during the year, 298 were severe and 127 not severe. Of those affected 280 were females.