Eating regimen Drugs From Brazil Pose Well being Risks

Eating regimen Drugs From Brazil Pose Well being Risks

Tablets are shown in this undated file photo. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen
BIG APPLE (Reuters Well being) - A new report highlights the potentially serious well being risks of using imported Brazilian-made prescription slimming capsules that mix amphetamines and other prescription medicines, such as anti-nervousness brokers and antidepressants.
Banned amphetamine-based weight loss drugs are simply available through the Web and are being illicitly imported into the United States, warns the report's author, Massachusetts-based mostly internist Dr. Pieter A. Cohen from Cambridge Well being Alliance, Cambridge and Harvard Medical Faculty, Boston.
Cohen became concerned in regards to the tablets' use when he noticed that many patients have been experiencing unexplained chest pain and other symptoms, a press release from Cambridge Alliance explains. Ultimately, some of these patients admitted that they had been utilizing the imported slimming capsules.
In the Journal of Normal Inner Drugs, Cohen describes one affected person - a 26-yr-outdated girl - who made several trips to her doctor complaining of chest ache, palpitations, complications, insomnia, nausea and fatigue.
Her symptoms began soon after she started taking Brazilian-made diet pills in an effort to drop some weight after her daughter was born. Amphetamines (stimulants) and benzodiazepines (anti-anxiousness medication) have been detected in her urine and the precise stimulant fenproporex, which is banned within the US, and the anti-anxiety drug chlordiazepoxide, were identified in her diet pills.
After the girl lost 30 pounds, she stopped taking the capsules and her signs disappeared, although she said she had cravings for the diet pills. When the woman began to regain the lost weight, she restarted the fat burners at which level her signs returned.
One other affected person, a 38-yr-outdated municipal truck driver who admitted to utilizing imported diet pills, was suspended from work after testing positive for amphetamine on a routine occupational drug screen. Fenproporex and the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) had been recognized in his tablets. While taking the tablets he skilled insomnia and palpitations. He reported shedding 12 pounds in 2 weeks.
In each circumstances, in accordance with Cohen, the tablets had been acquired from an acquaintance and written on the capsule vials had been another affected person's title, a physician's name and a pharmacist's title, in addition to a regional council of pharmacists' license number.
"Because the capsules are prescribed by physicians, some people assume they should be safe," Cohen said in a press release. "In actual fact, since the labels are deceptive, folks have no idea what harmful cocktail of medicines they are really using."
In Brazil, prescriptions for these "compounded" fat burners are often obtained from doctors in private practices who often market themselves as obesity specialists, Cohen additionally notes. Nonetheless, "none of the drugs included in these weight loss supplements are indicated for the therapy of weight problems according to generally accepted follow pointers."
SOURCE: Journal of Common Inside Drugs, December 2008.
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