RxISK blog

Medications compromising Covid Infections
April 2, 2020 | 21 Comments

IN THE MIDST OF THE SARS-CoV-2 PANDEMIA, CAUTION IS NEEDED WITH COMMONLY USED DRUGS THAT INCREASE THE RISK OF PNEUMONIA. Joan-Ramon Laporte, M.D. Emeritus Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, Department of Pharmacology, Therapeutics and Toxicology Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Fundació Institut Català de Farmacologia. WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Pharmacoepidemiology. jrl@icf.uab.cat David Healy […]

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Snakes in a Love Drug 2
March 29, 2020 | 3 Comments

This image is widely viewed as a symbol of medicine.  Many, particularly in America, owing to a bad mistake by the American Medical Association, would identify it as the Rod of Aesclepius, a healer in Ancient Greece. But its not a symbol of medicine – as it used to be at least – its the […]

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Snakes in a Love Drug on St Patricks Day
March 17, 2020 | 7 Comments

IJME In recent years the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics has been to the forefront in grappling with tricky issues in medical ethics and politics – topics that the best known medical journals and authorities should deal with but steer clear of. One of us (DH) had a growing awareness of IJME’s lead on tricky […]

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Causes Sexual Dysfunction, Suicide and Birth Defects?
March 3, 2020 | 34 Comments

Everyone who reads RxISK posts will know that SSRI and related drugs (some antibiotics, painkillers, antihistamines and most antidepressants) can cause sexual dysfunction. This has been known since 1961. And that they can cause suicide.  This has been known since 1959. And that they can cause birth defects. The first publication by an Australian obstetrician, […]

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The Politics of PSSD
February 18, 2020 | 28 Comments

Members of the British parliament In October 2019, we were contacted by a British PSSD sufferer who had done some excellent work in getting his Member of Parliament (MP), Steve McCabe, interested in the condition. We were informed that Mr. McCabe wanted to get a large group of MPs together to try and get some […]

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Gateway to the Soul
February 3, 2020 | 75 Comments

Read the accompanying Sex, Withdrawal and Boundaries post first.  We are looking for anyone interested in the material raised there to comment on or add to the set of questions below. We are so insensitive to the fact that our skin and gut principally, but also bladder and maybe the inner linings of our lungs, […]

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Sex, Withdrawal and Boundaries
February 3, 2020 | 31 Comments

“Do you think studying monolayers of cells will tell you why you fall in love with a girl?” The quote comes from Rudolf Hess, who won the Nobel Prize for physiology in 1949.  His students remembered him as telling them never to study a neurotransmitter or even a cell without thinking about where this bit […]

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What’s Sex Got to Do with It
January 23, 2020 | 27 Comments

This post gives the text of an article that has just been published online in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine – see Here. Another version of the material is in video form – Antidepressants and Sex: a Strange Story. Background In June 2019, in response to a petition, the European Medicines Agency […]

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The Banality of Health Service Evil
January 9, 2020 | 39 Comments

In the early 1960s, the American social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, ran now famous experiments using university students – then largely white and middle-class – as his subjects . His research interest lay in the Nazi concentration camps and the defence used by Adolf Eichmann (featured image) in his trial in Israel in 1962 – that […]

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Everything’s in Hand: Isotretinoin and the Usual Guff
January 4, 2020 | 26 Comments

Niks aan de Hand – Nothing out of hand. This item has just appeared in the BMJ:  An expert group has been reconvened to review recent safety data relating to the acne drug isotretinoin (Roaccutane) and evaluate the risk of sexual and psychiatric adverse effects, including suicide. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency’s isotretinoin […]

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Healthcare or Health Service?
December 23, 2019 | 15 Comments

Up to 1800, no-one went near a doctor if they could avoid it.  At best doctors might amuse the patient while nature cured the disease – the doctor’s business was to take as much of the credit and the money as possible.  The best was rare.  In an effort to get the money, doctors liked […]

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Trust Withdrawal and Antidepressants
December 10, 2019 | 18 Comments

The images, which are a wonderful metaphor for the coming back to life, the restoration of emotions and senses that stopping an antidepressant can bring, comes from this news item – its worth clicking on the video link There have probably been more posts about withdrawal from antidepressants – especially if PSSD is included as […]

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Antidepressant Withdrawal – The Enemy Within
November 18, 2019 | 47 Comments

  National Horror Show It goes completely against the grain for almost everyone in the UK to say anything bad about the NHS.  But in the case of the antidepressant group of drugs, with the brief note the NHS has just issued alerting people to the effect that antidepressants may be difficult to stop puts […]

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Sleep Problems After Stopping Antidepressants?
November 5, 2019 | 57 Comments

It is well known that antidepressants can interfere with a person’s sleep, but it’s less clear what happens after they stop taking the drug. One of our earliest blog posts from 2012 was written by someone experiencing terrifying nightmares while withdrawing from Cymbalta. The post received a number of comments from other people reporting the […]

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Coming off Depakote
October 28, 2019 | 10 Comments

I stopped Depakote – See Going on Depakote. First Try This was a nightmare to cold turkey off. I felt crazy, like my brain was going to explode and was on fire. I kept an ice pack on my head for days and listened to meditation tapes. I am not sure how I managed to […]

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Going on Depakote
October 21, 2019 | 7 Comments

Beginnings Childhoods are difficult to remember in detail. My first few memories were about the age of 2 1/2, maybe 3. I had chickenpox and I got an encephalitis. I didn’t know that this is what it was until years later, when I became a medical provider. My experience was that I visually hallucinated (the […]

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Not the RxISK Manifesto
October 18, 2019 | 11 Comments

Last week’s RxISK Manifesto post featured an article then just published in BMJ. The BMJ picture that went with the article looked like this.  This gives entirely the opposite message to the article. The article says a doctors job would be a lot more interesting if they listened and encouraged anyone consulting them to become […]

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RxISK Manifesto
October 7, 2019 | 11 Comments

This post is close to identical to an article that has just appeared in the BMJ – Clinical Judgments, not Algorithms, are key to Patient Safety.   Immediately on taking a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), most people have some genital anaesthesia.1 This may be aggravated on withdrawal of the drug and can remain for years […]

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PSSD Patient Experiences
September 25, 2019 | 32 Comments

New paper “If you wish to have such “syndrome” continue what you are doing … read obscure studies and reviews in obscure databases and I can guarantee to you that you will have it till the end of your life!” Anyone who has experienced a serious side effect from a medication will know how difficult […]

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Business Opportunity courtesy of Impeto Medical
September 9, 2019 | 32 Comments

Some months ago we had organised for 6 volunteers with PSSD to get tested for peripheral neuropathy, using a Sudoscan, made by Impeto Medical, who are based in Paris. By chance we found that there is a genital adaptor for the Sudoscan that has been in use for several years in Paris, leading to a […]

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Device Wrecks & Regulators?
September 4, 2019 | 18 Comments

RxISK is powered by people working behind the scenes – picking at threads and sometimes finding something rather different to what they expected.  One of those who can’t resist a loose thread is Suzanne Stevens, who has been interested in our Sudoscan problem. Many of you suffering with PSSD or related PRS, PRSD and PGAD […]

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Ecclesiastical and Pharmaceutical Risk Benefit Calculations
August 27, 2019 | 6 Comments

The Catholic Church has been convulsed in recent years by sexual abuse scandals. There are two aspects to this.  One has been the harm inflicted on children from the abuse but in many instances as much if not more damage has arisen from the secondary harms these children and later adults have incurred in their […]

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Sudoscan Saga & Propecia/Finasteride Survey
August 19, 2019 | 7 Comments

Sudoscan Several months ago, we became aware of a device called Sudoscan made by Impeto Medical, based in Paris. It’s mainly used to assess peripheral neuropathy in the hands and feet. But the company also have a special adaptor for Sudoscan that has been used to test genital function and found disturbances where other tests […]

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Extinction Revolt?
July 22, 2019 | 49 Comments

Editorial Note: Following the Montelukast, Fluoroquinolone and Psychotropic post, there is a comment from Heather Roberts to which David Healy responded.  The edited comments are here.  This led to an email exchange between HR and DH which follows.  Along with Wendy Dolin and her MISSD website (see above) and Billiam James’ Akathisia Anthem, Heather and […]

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Cis- and Trans-Drug Wrecks
July 15, 2019 | 3 Comments

After a Montelukast Withdrawal Syndrome post two weeks back, we had more comments than after any previous post – so much so that this seemed worth noting in a Post in its own right. After last weeks Transgender Meds, we have had fewer comments than after any previous post.  This also seems worth noting in […]

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Transgender Meds: A Call for Reports
July 8, 2019 | 6 Comments

This post is an invitation to report on drugs prescribed to transgender people. These include cross-sex hormones – testosterone for women, estrogen and progesterone for men, hormone-blocking agents like Lupron given to children with gender dysphoria to stop the physical changes of puberty, and other drugs like finasteride, spironolactone and birth-control pills prescribed to manage […]

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Montelukast, Fluoroquinolone, Psychotropic Withdrawal & Toxicity
July 1, 2019 | 37 Comments

Last week’s post on Montelukast Withdrawal Syndrome has attracted comments at a higher rate than any prior post in 7 years of RxISK posts. It followed a post on Asthma causing Suicide and Homicide two weeks previously, which had links to the QuarterWatch 2015 report of adverse events in children fingering montelukast and suicidality as […]

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Montelukast Withdrawal Syndrome
June 24, 2019 | 137 Comments

When my happy, full-of-life, adventure-seeking 11-year-old son experienced severe, debilitating neuropsychiatric symptoms after stopping his asthma medication, I embarked on a journey in a desperate search for answers. How could a medication that acts on the respiratory system reduce my healthy child to a lifeless shell? How could our beloved doctor not discuss the potential […]

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EMA Acknowledges Persistent Sexual Dysfunction After SSRIs & SNRIs
June 11, 2019 | 49 Comments

The European Medicines Agency has just concluded a review into sexual dysfunction after the discontinuation of SSRIs and SNRIs. Before we discuss their findings, it’s worth looking back over the events of the past year. RxISK petition In 2018, we put together a petition requesting changes to SSRI and SNRI product labels to warn about […]

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When Asthma leads to Suicide or Homicide
June 3, 2019 | 16 Comments

  It seems like it’s all happening in Wales at the moment.  Wales Online last week reported on two children who developed suicidal behaviour and change of personalities on montelukast – Singulair. It was two mother who pieced the story together in the case of their children and confirmed the link to the drug by […]

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