Co-proxamol supply will be guaranteed
Manufacturers of co-proxamol (paracetamol 325mg with dextropropoxyphene hydrochloride 32.5mg) have promised that the product will continue to be available after all UK marketing authorisations are cancelled at the end of the year. This was revealed by health minister Caroline Flint during a Westminster Hall debate
on the withdrawal last week.
Responding to claims by Anne Begg (Lab, Aberdeen South) and Howard Stoate
(Lab, Dartford) that there are no satisfactory alternative painkillers
for some arthritis patients, the minister said that doctors will be able
to continue to prescribe co-proxamol on a named-patient basis after the
licences are
cancelled.
Product licences for co-proxamol are being cancelled because early in
2005 the then Committee on Safety of Medicines advised that its efficacy
was poorly established and that it had an unacceptably
high risk of death from overdose (PJ, 5 February 2005, p135). Co-proxamol has been implicated
in 300–400 overdose deaths a year, with a fifth of them being accidental.
Miss Begg said that the reason that the efficacy of co-proxamol was poorly
established was that it is an old medicine that predated modern testing
requirements. “There are no robust data because there are no data,” she
said. It would have been equally possible for the CSM to have concluded
that co-proxamol was an effective painkiller because there was no evidence
to the contrary.
She added that a survey of doctors had found that 70 per cent of GPs
and 94 per cent of rheumatologists thought that the withdrawal should
be reconsidered.
Dr Stoate said that GPs and specialists were unhappy with the withdrawal
decision because co-proxamol has a proven track record as an effective
painkiller that it is well tolerated by patients with few side effects.
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