The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7404 p697
10 June 2006

Society summary

Meeting requests new warning on NSAID labels

The branch representatives' meeting has carried a motion asking the Society's Council to advise that dispensing labels for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs should include the cautionary wording: “These medicines are anti-inflammatory and should not be taken with any other anti-inflammatory medicines”.

Proposing the motion, Stephanie Bancroft (Harrow and Hillingdon) said that it highlighted a serious patient safety issue and the need to educate the public as to what NSAIDs are and why they are dangerous in excess.

When dispensing prescriptions for NSAIDs, pharmacists often hear the patient asking for an over-the-counter NSAID product such as ibuprofen to take with the prescribed medicine. In such cases the pharmacist can intervene, but what happens if the patient already has ibuprofen at home or buys it from a supermarket or petrol station? Patients cannot all be expected to read product information leaflets, so the least one can hope for is that they read the cautions on the computer-generated dispensing label and are prompted to check before buying anything else.

Steven Curtis (Harrow and Hillingdon) said that in a perfect world the general sales list status of ibuprofen and other anti-inflammatories would be reversed and a warning label put on all packs containing NSAIDs. The BRM could not do that, but it could start the ball rolling with a warning on dispensed prescription medicines. There were already similar warnings for paracetamol and aspirin. He urged the meeting to vote for the motion so that the Council could refer it to the Practice Committee and then, perhaps, to the Joint Formulary Committee of the British National Formulary.