In its January edition, the independent medical journal Prescrire called for the withdrawal of the buflomedil, a medicine used for painful manifestations of arteritis during walking. A drug accused of being “of no demonstrated therapeutic benefit” by the magazine.
The French Agency for the Safety of Health Products (Afssaps) has finally spoken out and announced this Tuesday, January 4, 2011 that this drug could indeed be took of.
Interviewed on France-Info, the assistant to the general manager of Afssaps, Fabienne Bartoli declared: “it is indeed a product which is being reassessed of the benefit-risk”. This reassessment is in its final process according to the assistant and the decision will be known in the first weeks of January. “The outcome could be a withdrawal or even a suspension (…) of the marketing authorization” she explains on the air.
As for the question raised by the journal Prescrire in its December issue, the Minister of Health Xavier Bertrand, proposed to speed up the procedures for re-evaluating the benefit-risk balance to withdraw more quickly from the market drugs that would be dangerous for health.
