Canada’s largest hospital permitted patients to suffer “persistent toxicity and adverse effects” resulting in elevated incidents of diabetes and liver dysfunction — along with a death — after being treated with an unlicensed drug for six years, says a co-author of a study being published Wednesday.
Dr. Brenda Gallie, a professor of medical biophysics and ophthalmology at the Hospital for Sick Children, says the new data provide clearevidence that the drug deferiprone — sold as Ferriprox by generic pharmaceutical maker Apotex — poses serious health risks that hospital administrators were told about years ago.
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/investigations/2019/02/27/uhn-patients-given-unlicensed-drug-that-led-to-diabetes-liver-dysfunction-and-one-death-study-finds/olivieri_and_gallie.jpg)
“These patients were sold a bill of goods that has impacted their health,” she says of patients given deferiprone, a drug used to treat hereditary blood disorders such as thalassemia. “It is a human experiment and I can’t imagine how it went on and on and on.”
The peer-reviewed study, obtained exclusively by the Star, is being published in Public Library of Science Journal. It concludes that deferiprone showed “significant toxicity in most patients” over the six-year study of 41 patients — findings that demand an “urgent, transparent review of current standards of patient protection, informed consent, and medical practice.”
The findings document a 17 per cent incidence of new diabetes and new liver dysfunction in 65 per cent of patients who were given deferiprone between 2009 and 2015. A woman in her 30s died in 2013, 13 months after being placed on the drug, the study found. Only two of the 41 patients fared well on deferiprone, said Gallie, who authored the study with Dr. Nancy Olivieri, a senior scientist at the University Health Network (UHN) who has been in a 22-year legal and academic dispute over the health impacts of deferiprone.
Funny how Apotex is at the center of this…
Early reports in the beginnings of this called the drug “new” as opposed to “unlicensed” . Gotta tip toe when reporting on drug makers .
I remeber this brave lady from when this first came out . Should have been a wake up call for many . The will of the drug maker overcame the opinion of a highly respected pediatric doctor . She was fired from being head of pediatrics at Sick Kids in Toronto. Her crime , disobeying orders from a drug manufacturer. Simple put she warned patients parents the drug she was trying could potentially cause liver ptoblems . She was still willing to prescribe it as at time she thought it was a potentially good drug at the time but thought people should be warned . For that, on the order of Apotex shes was removed from her position. She dared to challange the authority of a drug maker in the name of patient health and consent. Few weeks back i noticed a new hospital on Wilson Ave in Toronto. It had Apotex right in the name on front of building. Guess the medical industry has found away to better control medical personel that would dare to act as a medical professional . God bless this good Doctor