Drug reactions prompt questions

By MARTIN JOHNSTON and THE INDEPENDENT

New Zealand health authorities are seeking more information on the quit-smoking pill Zyban, after reports from Britain that 37 people died while taking it.

But New Zealand drug regulation authority Medsafe is not rushing to follow its British counterpart and impose tighter restrictions, and even questions the science behind the move.

Nearly 140 people here have suffered bad reactions suspected of being linked to the drug.

Britain's Committee on Safety of Medicines is telling doctors to phase patients onto the pill more slowly, after reports of more than 5000 bad reactions.

Patients will now take one pill a day for a week before progressing to two a day. Previously, the increased dose began on day four - and this regime is still recommended in New Zealand.

Medsafe medical head Dr Stewart Jessamine said yesterday: "We are going to have to seek some data on how they reached that conclusion because it doesn't actually make a lot of sense in straight-up pharmacological terms."

Zyban was launched here in July last year. It costs about $350 for the course of at least seven weeks and is not part of the Government's scheme to subsidise nicotine therapy.

Zyban, an anti-depressant, is not meant for use by people at risk of seizures, because the risk of having them increases with rising doses.

Dr Ian Griffiths, New Zealand medical director of the drug's maker, GlaxoSmithKline, said that like many other drugs, Zyban lowered the threshold to having a seizure.

Dr Griffiths said there had been reports of 139 bad reactions in New Zealand, out of the estimated 20,000 people who had used Zyban. One person using it had died, Dr Griffiths said, but it was a suicide and not linked to Zyban.