poledriver
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Concerns of a link between quit-smoking drug and mental health problems
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Anybody who's ever tried knows that giving up cigarettes is really tough. So when the quit smoking drug Champix hit the market, it was hailed as a major breakthrough. But since then, concerns have emerged about the medication's side effects. The Queensland Coroner has reopened an investigation into the death of a young Brisbane man who killed himself eight days after taking the drug and is part of it is also reviewing the suicides of any Australian who was taking Champix at the time of their death. In the United States, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer has already settled a multimillion-dollar class action relating to Champix. Louise Milligan reports.
TIMOTHY MORWOOD-OLDHAM: (Tape recording) Mum, I love you with all my heart. Peter, you're the best brother I could ask for. I know it doesn't make sense right now, but it's for the best, trust me. I'm losing my mind, I'm going crazy. I love you both.
PHOEBE MORWOOD-OLDHAM, MOTHER: How can you lose the best thing in your life, just like that? It's a person you work so hard, you put all your energy into for 22 years.
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Phoebe Morwood-Oldham is playing the tape recording her son Timothy left on the kitchen bench before he took his life in 2013.
PHOEBE MORWOOD-OLDHAM: When he first died, I used to play it and then I got to the stage where I couldn't hear it anymore. It just hurt too much.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Timothy Oldham was 22. Next to the tape recorder, he'd left a box of the quit smoking drug Champix. He'd been on it for eight days. Phoebe says his strange behaviour started a few days into the treatment.
PHOEBE MORWOOD-OLDHAM: I went to bed and I got up and he's sitting at his door on a cushion with my electric chainsaw plugged in, telling me that there are people coming to get him.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Had he ever done anything like that before?
PHOEBE MORWOOD-OLDHAM: Never. That was so far out of the scale of things that I expected.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Timothy had been a champion tennis player. But he had suffered anxiety after two difficult experiences in his teens. First, the family house burnt down and then he was beaten up at a shopping centre.
But Phoebe says what happened to him after taking Champix was something entirely different.
Had Timothy ever expressed suicidal thoughts before?
PHOEBE MORWOOD-OLDHAM: Never, never.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: It was only after Timothy died that Phoebe discovered that the link between Champix and suicide had been made before.
DIANA ZUCKERMAN, US NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH RESEARCH: It seems very clear that people sometimes who would never have thought about suicide before, when they're taking this drug, they start thinking about it. And sometimes they act on those thoughts and actually try to kill themselves or they do kill themselves.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Dr Diana Zuckerman is a former policy advisor to Hillary Clinton and runs America's National Center for Health Research.
DIANA ZUCKERMAN: We've been very concerned about the drug because it has so many more adverse reactions that have been reported than pretty much any other drug.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Known as Chantix in the US, the drug has carried a so-called black box warning about side effects since 2009.
Pharmaceutical company Pfizer settled a class action launched over a range of side effects by thousands of Chantix users.
DIANA ZUCKERMAN: There were almost 3,000 plaintiffs and there were - we understand that was about $300 million.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Five health advocacy groups, including Dr Zuckerman's, successfully petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration to strengthen the Chantix black box warning last year, but that hasn't been the experience in Australia with Champix.
This is Champix. It was introduced to the Australian market in 2007 and in the first couple of years there were 900,000 prescriptions filled. In 2010, the Therapeutic Goods Administration had more than 200 reports of suicide-related events for Champix patients. But as you can see, there's no warning on the outside of the packet and when you open it up, there's nothing inside either because the Australian law doesn't require that.
Respiratory physiologist Renee Bittoun started one of the world's first quit smoking clinics in Sydney. Like many of her colleagues in Australian and the UK, she argues large population studies suggest nicotine withdrawal affects mental health, not Champix.
RENEE BITTOUN, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: We don't actually view this as a symptom or side effect of the drug per se. It may be a side effect of not having nicotine in your brain. And that often manifests as depression or anxiety. We have seen a lot of this way before the advent of Champix. We have seen it for - I've seen it for decades.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Associate Professor Bittoun says that now that nicotine addiction is at a historic law, the cohort that's still smoking has a higher rate of mental illness.
RENEE BITTOUN: The risk you take, but putting a big warning on it, is that people will not take it and smokers die from it, from smoking. One in two smokers dies from their smoking.
JODIE NICHOLSON: He was a rare, rare soul. He was happy. He loved me, but most of all, he loved his kids.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Paul Nicholson killed himself in October, 2009. He and his wife Jodie had been on Champix for a month.
CONT -
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-02/concerns-of-a-link-between-quit-smoking-drug-and/6591456
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Anybody who's ever tried knows that giving up cigarettes is really tough. So when the quit smoking drug Champix hit the market, it was hailed as a major breakthrough. But since then, concerns have emerged about the medication's side effects. The Queensland Coroner has reopened an investigation into the death of a young Brisbane man who killed himself eight days after taking the drug and is part of it is also reviewing the suicides of any Australian who was taking Champix at the time of their death. In the United States, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer has already settled a multimillion-dollar class action relating to Champix. Louise Milligan reports.
TIMOTHY MORWOOD-OLDHAM: (Tape recording) Mum, I love you with all my heart. Peter, you're the best brother I could ask for. I know it doesn't make sense right now, but it's for the best, trust me. I'm losing my mind, I'm going crazy. I love you both.
PHOEBE MORWOOD-OLDHAM, MOTHER: How can you lose the best thing in your life, just like that? It's a person you work so hard, you put all your energy into for 22 years.
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Phoebe Morwood-Oldham is playing the tape recording her son Timothy left on the kitchen bench before he took his life in 2013.
PHOEBE MORWOOD-OLDHAM: When he first died, I used to play it and then I got to the stage where I couldn't hear it anymore. It just hurt too much.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Timothy Oldham was 22. Next to the tape recorder, he'd left a box of the quit smoking drug Champix. He'd been on it for eight days. Phoebe says his strange behaviour started a few days into the treatment.
PHOEBE MORWOOD-OLDHAM: I went to bed and I got up and he's sitting at his door on a cushion with my electric chainsaw plugged in, telling me that there are people coming to get him.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Had he ever done anything like that before?
PHOEBE MORWOOD-OLDHAM: Never. That was so far out of the scale of things that I expected.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Timothy had been a champion tennis player. But he had suffered anxiety after two difficult experiences in his teens. First, the family house burnt down and then he was beaten up at a shopping centre.
But Phoebe says what happened to him after taking Champix was something entirely different.
Had Timothy ever expressed suicidal thoughts before?
PHOEBE MORWOOD-OLDHAM: Never, never.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: It was only after Timothy died that Phoebe discovered that the link between Champix and suicide had been made before.
DIANA ZUCKERMAN, US NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH RESEARCH: It seems very clear that people sometimes who would never have thought about suicide before, when they're taking this drug, they start thinking about it. And sometimes they act on those thoughts and actually try to kill themselves or they do kill themselves.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Dr Diana Zuckerman is a former policy advisor to Hillary Clinton and runs America's National Center for Health Research.
DIANA ZUCKERMAN: We've been very concerned about the drug because it has so many more adverse reactions that have been reported than pretty much any other drug.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Known as Chantix in the US, the drug has carried a so-called black box warning about side effects since 2009.
Pharmaceutical company Pfizer settled a class action launched over a range of side effects by thousands of Chantix users.
DIANA ZUCKERMAN: There were almost 3,000 plaintiffs and there were - we understand that was about $300 million.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Five health advocacy groups, including Dr Zuckerman's, successfully petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration to strengthen the Chantix black box warning last year, but that hasn't been the experience in Australia with Champix.
This is Champix. It was introduced to the Australian market in 2007 and in the first couple of years there were 900,000 prescriptions filled. In 2010, the Therapeutic Goods Administration had more than 200 reports of suicide-related events for Champix patients. But as you can see, there's no warning on the outside of the packet and when you open it up, there's nothing inside either because the Australian law doesn't require that.
Respiratory physiologist Renee Bittoun started one of the world's first quit smoking clinics in Sydney. Like many of her colleagues in Australian and the UK, she argues large population studies suggest nicotine withdrawal affects mental health, not Champix.
RENEE BITTOUN, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: We don't actually view this as a symptom or side effect of the drug per se. It may be a side effect of not having nicotine in your brain. And that often manifests as depression or anxiety. We have seen a lot of this way before the advent of Champix. We have seen it for - I've seen it for decades.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Associate Professor Bittoun says that now that nicotine addiction is at a historic law, the cohort that's still smoking has a higher rate of mental illness.
RENEE BITTOUN: The risk you take, but putting a big warning on it, is that people will not take it and smokers die from it, from smoking. One in two smokers dies from their smoking.
JODIE NICHOLSON: He was a rare, rare soul. He was happy. He loved me, but most of all, he loved his kids.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Paul Nicholson killed himself in October, 2009. He and his wife Jodie had been on Champix for a month.
CONT -
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-02/concerns-of-a-link-between-quit-smoking-drug-and/6591456
