“No cause” for alarm over drug imipraminre

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32862, 10 March 1972, Page 2

“No cause” for alarm over drug imipraminre

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, March 9.

A Health Department report on the drug imipramine made it clear that there was no cause for alarm over its use in New Zealand, said the Minister of Health (Mr AdamsSchneider) today.

He asked for the report after a warning from an Australian doctor that the drug caused deformities in babies when taken by pregnant women.

Mr Adams-Schneider said that reactions on this and other drugs had been published in the “New Zealand Medical Journal’’ in September, 1971, and February, 1972. The medical profession was well aware of the risks inherent in prescribing certain drugs during pregnancy and literature issued free to the public by the department warned expectant mothers not to take any medicines or drugs unless these had been prescribed by a doctor. “In the case of imipramine, the firm which developed this drug had repeatedly warned against its use in early pregnancy,” Mr Adams-Schneider said. N.Z. ACTION

Action had already been taken in New Zealand to wam doctors of the possible effect of the drug and there was no need to take any further action.

Mr Adams-Schneider said that premature or excessive reaction by the Health Department to an unconfirmed overseas report could well have had tragic results had it induced doctors to discontinue or change their method of treatment of large numbers of women who had been stabilised on imipramine. “GO-SLOW” The medical secretary of the Medical Association of New Zealand (Dr A. W. Lewis) said today that pregnancy tests were not routinely taken on women before the prescription of the drug imipramine. It would probably be in a woman’s best interest if she were to advise the doctor if there were any possibility of her being in the early stages of pregnancy.

To test for pregnancy before the prescribing of any drugs was not common practice, Dr Lewis said. He said there would obviously be a “go-slow” on the drag until it was proven that it was not responsible for the deformation of babies

when used by women in the early stages of pregnancy. The Australian Drag Evaluation Committee interviewed th® Sydney gynaecologist, Dr William Mcßride today, then decided to modify its interim warning against prescribing imipramine to women capable of childbearing, says a Reuter report from Sydney. The committee’s chairman (Sir William Morrow) told a press conference that Dr Mcbride—the first man to connect the sedative thalidomide with congenital abnormalities —had amended to the committee his original statement warning of the effects of imipramine. Of the three cases of birth

defect originally cited by Dr Mcßride, only one was true amelia (total absence of arms), Sir William Morrow said. The two other babies had a less severe degree of abnormality—arms shorter than usual.

He quoted Dr Mcßride as saying now that only one of thq, mothers had taken imipramine in pregnancy. The mothers of the two other children were said to have taken another type of anti-depressant in the same tricyclic group of drugs (which have three rings m their chemical structure).

In none of these cases, Sir William Morrow said, had full details been made available to the committee.