Zyprexa News
More Kids Prescribed Zyprexa and Similar Anti-Psychotic Drug For ADD
- March 17, 2006
A new study revealed that an alarmingly high number of children in the United States are being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs like Zyprexa for attention deficit disorder (ADD) and similar behavioral problems, which these drugs are not proven to treat.
According to the study published in the journal Ambulatory Pediatrics, the number of children prescribed these medications annually had a fivefold increase from 1995 to 2002. Approximately 8.6 out of 1,000 children in the mid 1990s were prescribed anti-psychotic drugs compared to almost 40 out of every 1,000 children in the last few years.
Researchers said that more than 50 percent of the prescriptions were for the treatment of ADD and other non-psychotic conditions.
Dr. William Cooper, lead author of the study and pediatrician at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, said the findings were troublesome "because it looks like these medication are being used for large numbers of children in a setting where we don't know if they work."
Anti-psychotic drugs such as Eli Lilly's Zyprexa are intended to treat conditions such as schizophrenia and other related illnesses and were aggressively marketed after their approval in the mid 1990s, which can explain the increase in the drug use.
While the label on these medications say they have never been tested for safety or effectiveness for pediatric use, doctors are prescribing them to children with ADD.
Parents and doctors say that ADD sometimes causes temper tantrums and disruptive behavior, which anti-psychotic drugs seem to help with.
However, Zyprexa and similar medications have serious adverse side effects, which may be putting children at risk for weight gain, elevated cholesterol, and diabetes.
Dr. David Fassler, a psychiatry professor at the University of Vermont, said more research of anti-psychotic drugs is needed before it is considered a standard treatment for ADD in children.
"There's no question that we need additional studies on both safety and efficacy in pediatric populations," he said.
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or not Zyprexa and similar atypical antipsychotic drugs are linked to diabetes
is a question that will be answered in the Zyprexa lawsuits that have been
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