DANGER PILLS
Britain’s most dangerous prescription drug linked to 7,000 deaths since being approved
Medics say 'every single death is an absolute tragedy'
A PRESCRIPTION drug available on the NHS has been linked to 7,000 deaths since it was approved, data shows.
Clozapine — dubbed Britain’s “most dangerous” prescription drug — has been licensed to treat schizophrenia since 1990.
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Analysis by found the drug is linked to almost eight times as many reported deaths as any other high-risk medicine.
It is prescribed for around 37,000 Brits a year but can cause toxicity, with symptoms including weight gain, heart issues and respiratory illnesses.
William Northcott died at the age of 39 from a heart attack at a mental health care home in Torbay, Devon, after having taken the drug for years.
His sister Kate Northcott Spall, 51, of Chester, told the paper: “William spent two years with arrows all over him pointing at clozapine toxicity symptoms but nothing was done.
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“He’d been an inpatient, he had a community mental health team, he was in residential care with nurses. I truly believed they were caring for him.”
The family are still waiting for an inquest but an interim death certificate gave William's cause of death as "fatal arrhythmia most likely due to prescription drug toxicity".
Around 685,000 Brits live with schizophrenia — a mental health condition that can cause a range of psychological symptoms.
These include hallucinations, delusions, muddled thoughts and speech, losing interest in everyday activities, wanting to avoid people and feeling disconnected from emotions.
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Clozapine was first used in the 1970s but was withdrawn worldwide after scientists found it could drastically impair the immune system.
Trials in the following decade showed it was effective in schizophrenic patients who did not respond to other antipsychotics, and it was gradually reintroduced under strict restrictions.
It has been available to patients for whom at least two other drugs have been ineffective in the UK since 1990.
The drug has also been prescribed off-label to help patients with other conditions, including Alzheimer’s.
The Times’ analysis shows an average of more than 400 clozapine-linked deaths have been reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency each year for the past decade.
Every single death from clozapine is an absolute tragedy
Nikki Holmes
The medicines watchdog’s yellow card reporting scheme also gets around 2,400 notifications a year of “suspected serious reactions” to the drug.
Nikki Holmes, a consultant mental health pharmacist, said “every single death from clozapine is an absolute tragedy”.
A spokesperson for Living with Schizophrenia said the drug has a “complex side-effect profile which requires extremely diligent management”.
They said: “Any adverse side-effects must always be weighed against the risk of not intervening.
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"In this case that would be the risk of mortal danger arising from uncontrolled psychotic thinking."
The NHS said it follows MHRA guidance on using the drug safely and the MHRA said it is “one of the most tightly monitored medicines on the UK market” kept under “close review”.
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