Anti-arthritic drugs warning repeated

Press, 19 May 1984, Page 9

Anti-arthritic drugs warning repeated

No New Zealand ban is expected on two powerful anti-arthritic drugs after their withdrawal from the British market because of possibly lethal side-effects. Instead, the Health Department will repeat warnings to doctors about the use of pain-killing drugs containing the chemicals oxyphenbutazone or phenylbutazine, in a circular due out next month. British health authorities have banned two oxyphen-butazone-based drugs, Tandacote and Tanderil, which were thought to have contributed to 131 deaths since their introduction in 1964. The department’s deputy director of clinical services, Dr Bob Boyd, was reluctant to comment yesterday on the contents of the New Zealand circular, except to

say that earlier warnings about the drugs’ use were unchanged.

“All we can hope is that the medicines are used very little if they are around,” he said. If the department’s advisory committee on drugs had recommended some urgent action, Dr Boyd said it would have been publicised immediately.

Doubts had been expressed for many years about the side-effects of oxyphenbutazone and phenylbutazine, both of which would be covered in the circular. The former chemical was used hardly at all now in New Zealand, said Dr Boyd.

He believed that the Swiss manufacturer of the two banned drugs, Geigy Pharmaceuticals, would ap-

peal the British decision. A Christchurch Hospital rheumatologist, Dr Peter Moller, said the development of anti-inflammatory analgesics with fewer harmful side-effects had led to the move away from the two chemicals.

The only possible use he saw for phenylbutazine was in treating some cases of acute gout or an inflammatory arthritis that caused Eain and stiffness in the ack. “It is of no major concern because most doctors are not using them now except in those conditions,” he said. A representative of CibaGeigy New Zealand, Ltd, said he believed that the department was not banning sales of drugs containing the two chemicals, but advising against their widespread use.