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Lilly Makes Billions Off Zyprexa While Approved for Schizophrenia Only
By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 2 of 5 page(s)
The report noted that both commercial and Medicaid populations experienced increased use and that one study documented a 75% increase in the commercially insured population of 0-17 years from 1997 to 2001, and another study of use in the commercial managed care population from 1996 to 2001 found a 127% increase among children aged 0 to18.
The study found that antipsychotic use in the Medicaid populations in the late 1990s was already 3-4 times higher than commercial populations but also grew in the early 2000s. In Texas, prescription rates for kids rose 141% between 1996 and 2001 and in another program in the Midwest, usage grew 304% over the same time period, the report stated.
The authors said the analyses reveals that the drugs are used to treat a broad spectrum of disorders, and some of these disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and major depression, "clearly do not call for antipsychotic treatment."
The study found that in the 0 to 5 age group, 53.8% of the antipsychotics were prescribed for ADHD and in the age group 6 to 12, 48% were prescribed for ADHD.
The report noted that the use of antipsychotics with children under 6 is generally not recommended and "should be considered only in very rare circumstances."
The authors pointed out that the risk associated with the increased use would be significant even if the medications were prescribed for indications approved for adults since most would agree that in this context children can not be considered "little adults."
But the medications are now being used to treat a broad spectrum of disorders never anticipated or approved for adult use and we "therefore lack even the adult analogy in trying to estimate safety, tolerability and effectiveness of antipsychotic agents in the pediatric population," the authors wrote.
A September 2007 study in the Archives of General Psychiatry, reported that the number of children in the US diagnosed with bipolar disorder had increased from about 20,000 in 1994 to roughly 800,000 in 2003.
One of the world's leading experts on psychopharmacology, UK psychiatrist and professor, Dr David Healy, author of, "The Latest Mania: Selling Bipolar Disorder," says bipolar disorder in children is all but unrecognized outside the US and it is unlikely that a significant proportion of these children would actually meet the DSM criteria for the disorder.
A group of researchers that Dr Healy credits with turning American children into profit centers via the pediatric diagnosis of bipolar disorder is led by psychiatrist, Dr Joseph Biederman, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
According to Dr Healy, Massachusetts General conducted clinical trials with Zyprexa and Risperdal in children as young as four, and recruited participants by running TV ads featuring clinicians and parents informing other parents that difficult and aggressive behavior in children aged four and up might be caused by bipolar disorder.
"This does more than recruit patients with a clear disorder," Dr Healy notes, "it suggests that everyday behavioral difficulties may be better seen in terms of a disorder."
He explains that it would be all but impossible in a short-term trial of sedative drugs in pediatric states characterized by overactivity to not show some behavioral changes that could be regarded as beneficial, so the outcomes of the trials would naturally appear to validate the bipolar diagnosis and increase the prescribing of drugs.
As for the recent claims that child suicide rates have significantly increased since the FDA added warnings about an increased risk of suicide to the labels of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants (SSRIs), Dr Healy says if suicide rates have increased at all, it is most likely due to doctors switching children from SSRIs to antipsychotics.
In the last two or three years, he explains, drug companies have marketed bipolar disorder by claiming that the problems from SSRIs were the result of patients being misdiagnosed as depressed when they should have been diagnosed as bipolar and given antipsychotics.
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