After the mediator, roacutane, widely used to treat moderate and heavy teenage acne, is making headlines.
Main side effect: severe psycho-depressant and apparently more or less persistent effect (!!!) ...see "research" below ...
After the Servier laboratory Mediator scandal, accused of causing the death of 500 people in France, another drug is now on the hot seat. Isotretinoin, a powerful molecule prescribed to treat severe acne, marketed under the name Roaccutane before being withdrawn from the market in 2008, but still sold in the form of generics, is suspected of being linked to around thirty suicides of adolescents.
The daily "La Provence" reveals, in its Thursday edition, that Me Collard has taken action against three laboratories marketing this molecule. The Marseille lawyer acts on behalf of Daniel Voidey, 42, father of a teenager from Nice who died while he had been undergoing heavy acne treatment for seven months.
The Isotretinoin package leaflet mentions 152 side effects, including the risk of depression and suicide. The French Agency for Health Safety of Health Products (Afssaps) estimates that 25 to 27 suicide cases of adolescents, between 1986 and 2009, are linked to the taking of this drug. Parents have created an association of Roaccutane and generics victims (AVRG).
Four million patients affected since 1986
Asked by "La Provence", Daniel Voidey deplores that "the only thing that was recommended to my son is not to be exposed to the sun". The teenager committed his terrible act two days after he stopped taking his medication. "He hanged himself from a tree 800 meters from the house," his father continues in the Marseille daily. At the start of the treatment, everything went well. But the last month, I felt it beaten down. Three days before ending his life, he had passed his baccalaureate. He looked better. The day before his suicide, he isolated himself and then killed himself. On her cell phone, this message: "Mom, I don't know what I've had for 3 weeks, but I'm fed up with it, I can't take it anymore, I still have pain somewhere, my joints, my back. , ingrown nails, my skin which itches all the time. It's small things, but accumulated, it's hard "".
Like Daniel Voidey, a Vauclusien has taken action to have the link between taking isotretinoin and the depressive, ocular and muscular disorders from which he suffers recognized. He initiated proceedings before the Avignon court against the Roche laboratory. Unsuccessful at first instance, he appealed. Me Gilbert Collard, for his part, assigned the Roche laboratories, but also Expanscience and Pierre Fabre who manufacture the generics. The case should be argued in mid-March before the TGI of Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine).
Afssaps' vigilance towards isotretinoin, marketed under the name Roaccutane since 1984, has been exercised since 1995. But, according to "La Provence", the prevention program was only reinforced in 2009: implementation place of a notebook for patients, reminder of psychiatric disorders, letters to professionals ... A survey of a hundred dermatologists was launched in November 2010, but the Agency will only know the conclusions from here at the end of the year. A delay too long in the eyes of the AVRG, which advances the study of an American psychiatrist demonstrating that isotretinoin affects the functioning of the frontal cortex, zone where the emotions develop. Since 1986, four million patients have been prescribed Roaccutane, or one of the generics Curacne, Procuta, Contracné or Isotretinoin Teva.
LeParisien.fr
http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/medica ... 246976.php
Other article:
Acne treatment: the scary molecule
The father of a 17-year-old young man from Nice who hanged himself and a Vauclusien who took Roaccutane went to court.
Major virtue of isotretinoin: this powerful molecule overcomes the most serious acnes. Disadvantage: a list of 152 undesirable effects, including risks of depression and suicide, appear on the package leaflet of this drug marketed until 2008 under the name Roaccutane by the Roche laboratory and then in the form of generics.
(...)
http://www.laprovence.com/article/regio ... -fait-peur
Research level we have this (ie not much but better than nothing ...) : http://avrg.unblog.fr/teste-de-page-recherche/ (be careful, it's a little "translated gogol")
“We analyzed a group of 13 individuals who had been treated with isotretinoin, which is called Accutane in the United States, and we compared them with 15 individuals who had been treated with antibiotics. Brain function was analyzed before and after treatment with antibiotics or isotretinoin. There has been a 16% decrease in brain function in the frontal cortex, this is the brain region involved in feelings and morale, in patients treated with isotretinoin, but not in patients treated with antibiotics. ”
Site of the association of roaccutane and generic victims: http://avrg.unblog.fr/