Stilnox
This may have been in the news for some time elsewhere but is being reported currently in the Land Downunder.
Stilnox, an apparently popular sleeping tablet is being blamed for a number of bizarre deaths and injuries. These include:
- a 37 year old walking off the balcony of his 12th story unit
- a man who rode his motorcycle half naked and without a helmet while asleep and was killed
- a women who committed a break and enter while half asleep
- a patient who gained 23 kilograms from “sleep eating” while taking the drug
I would have hoped that we had reached a stage of medical advancement where these sort of side effects constituted a reason why the drug would not be released.
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
- Hey we put it on the “information leaflet” so we are ok - crap!Last month, Sanofi-Aventis’s Australia-New Zealand medical director, Gordon Hirsch, told ABC Radio hallucinations, memory loss and sleepwalking were known side effects of Stilnox and were highlighted in the product information leaflet.
- tell that to the families of those who died“Hallucinations and memory loss, for example, are uncommon so they would occur in less than one in 1000 people taking the drug and sleepwalking, for example, is reported as rare, so that would occur in less than 1 per cent of patients,” Mr Hirsch said.
- I feel so much better now!“And to date, the numbers of patients that have reported side effects while using Stilnox in Australia are well within these figures.”
