Should this be a no-brainer?
Officials from state and local health
departments around the country are urging the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) to add “black box” warnings to opioid painkillers
and sedatives known as benzodiazepines, to alert people that taking them
together increases the risk of fatal overdoses.
On Monday 41 health officials submitted a petition to the FDA about the warnings, The Washington Post reports.
The petition
urges the FDA to adopt labeling for all opioid medications that reads:
“Warning: Concurrent use with benzodiazepines reduces the margin of
safety for respiratory depression and contributes to the risk of fatal
overdose, particularly in the setting of misuse.” A similar warning
would be placed on benzodiazepines, warning about mixing the drugs with
opioids.
“Existing warnings about the concurrent use of opioids and
benzodiazepines are inconsistent, infrequent, and insufficient. The FDA
should act swiftly on the clear scientific evidence and add black box
warnings to both classes of medication,” one of the petition’s signers,
Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, Director of Rhode Island’s Department of
Health, said in a news release.
“All of us–federal regulators, public health officials, and healthcare
providers–have moral and professional obligations to make sure that
people stop dying because of these drugs.”
The officials noted patients with chronic pain are often prescribed
opioids to treat their pain and benzodiazepines to treat their
associated symptoms, such as anxiety and sleep disorders. They said
taken together, the two classes of drugs can severely depress the
respiratory system, causing the patient to stop breathing.
The FDA said in a statement that it “is committed to working with the
health care community and our federal, state and local partners to help
reduce opioid and benzodiazepine misuse and abuse. We will continue to
monitor the combined use of these products and take necessary actions to
ensure prescribers and the public are informed of the risks involved
with the use of these medications.”
Sumber: drugfree.org
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