After 50 years, the potentially dangerous prescription painkillers have been pulled from the U.S. market at the request of the FDA.
The FDA has requested that the narcotic pain relievers Darvon and Darvocet be pulled from the market in the U.S. after decades of questions from the medical community.
The prescription painkillers, which contain propoxyphene, have been on the market for 50 years in the U.S. and have proven to be highly addictive. That’s not why they were pulled, though. The FDA was responding to a recent study that proved the drugs can cause abnormal heart rhythms which have resulted in thousands of deaths in patients who took these medications.
Propoxyphene was banned in the U.K. in 2005 and the European Union in 2009. So what took the U.S. so long to pull the potentially dangerous drug from the market?
“Back in 1978 the consumer group Public Citizen first petitioned U.S. regulators to remove the drug from the market,” the Huffington Post reports. “Public Citizen recognized that propoxyphene can cause a toxic metabolite to accumulate in the body. The organization further maintains that thousands of Americans may have died from the cardiac toxicity of the drug, which interrupts the electrical conduction to the heart.”
Both Darvon and Darvocet, brand name versions of the prescription pain medication propoxyphene, are manufactured by Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals Inc. Darvocet contains propoxyphene mixed with acetaminophen, which is a less potent pain reliever and fever reducer that increases the effects of propoxyphene. Usually used to relieve mild to moderate pain, the drug can be habit forming.
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