The pick: a reminder of the facts
The controversy around Pick has not stopped swelling for a few months. Last October, we already informed you of the misdeeds attributable to the Pick. This time, the facts are made public by the National Health Insurance Fund which yesterday presented its investigation into the Pick. This drug is therefore responsible for 500 deaths and 3,500 hospitalizations between 1976 and 2009.
As a reminder, the Pick marketed by Servier laboratories and recommended first against diabetes and then to people wishing to lose weight, was not withdrawn from sale until November 2009. A late withdrawal when we know that this drug, derived from amphetamines, was withdrawn in 1997 in Spain or Italy. “It was 33 years after its marketing and ten years after the first pharmacovigilance declaration in France that the Mediator was suspended” explains Le Figaro.
Doctors have tried to alert health authorities for many years, but to no avail. Today, it is clearly established that the Pick causes valve insufficiency (valve disease causing abnormal shortness of breath) and a rare disease,pulmonary hypertension. “When you swallow a Mediator pill, a small extremely toxic substance is formed in your body which attacks the valves of the heart. Taking Mediator causes these valves to retract, to thicken, which will lose their seal. The blood then begins to flow back into the heart, which gets tired considerably “explained today, on Europe 1, Irène Frachon, pulmonologist at the Brest hospital, author of” Mediator 150 “.
Disturbing misdeeds especially when we know that the Pick has been used by nearly 3 million people. However, it seems that serious trouble only arises for one in a thousand people.
What do we risk if we have taken the Picks?
The Director General of the Health Products Agency (Afssaps) explains today that the risks of valve disease are more important “in the first two years of treatment and in the two years after stopping treatment”.
The National Health Insurance Fund (Cnam) will, for its part, attempt to reach by mail “all patients who have had more than three months of treatment”, explained Mr. Marimbert, Director General of Afssaps. “We will recommend that they go and see their doctor, and if the doctor notices that they have a heart murmur, he will refer them to a consultation of cardiology“, he added.
Pick: what are the symptoms to watch out for?
Shortness of breath on exertion, edema of the lower limbs, unexplained fatigue … may be signs suggesting valve damage. If you experience such symptoms, promptly consult your doctor.
Pick: what measures?
The Minister of Health, Xavier Bertrand declared that he took the matter seriously and he also received at the end of the morning Mr. Marimbert, director of Afssaps to take stock of the situation.
As for the victims, some have already lodged a complaint. The files are in progress.
For its part, the Servier laboratory denounced “hypotheses based on extrapolations”: “the mere observation of a valve disease in a diabetic does not therefore allow it to be attributed to a drug treatment which remains a very rare cause, all therapeutic classes combined”.
