However, critics of regulatory officials are quick to point out that the FDA has known about the dangers of these drugs long before now. For instance, in the fall of 2001, a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry said the FDA had been alerted to 19 cases of diabetes associated with Zyprexa and one patient died.
Of the 19 patients, the paper said, seven had newly diagnosed hyperglycemia and in 2 cases, the sugar disorder developed within one week of taking Zyprexa, and developed within six months for the other 8 patients.
The most studied adverse effect has been their association with hyperglycemia, in some cases leading to ketoacidosis, coma, or death. But nonetheless, even though Risperdal was recently refused FDA approval for treating autism, this class of drugs are increasingly being used off-label to treat behavior problems in children on the autism spectrum.
The study also found that the average weight gain in patients treated with the older drugs was much lowers and the sedation side effect was more common with the new drugs. The authors noted that the FDA "has not approved any antipsychotic drugs for treating childhood schizophrenia; yet, clinicians routinely use medications for this disorder."
However, there are signs that Big Pharma's ability to use children as funnels to drain tax dollars from government health care programs might be waning. On August 16, 2006, the Houston Chronicle reported that 5 doctors who treat poor children in Texas were notified that they need to return Medicaid money used to pay for psychiatric drugs to that state.
This latest move, newspaper said, is part of a 2-year effort to better regulate how children on Medicaid are prescribed psychiatric drugs.
Two years ago, Brian Flood, the Texas Health and Human Services' Inspector General, and Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, began reviewing information on how doctors were prescribing stimulants, antidepressants and antipsychotics to children on Medicaid.
The studies revealed that children were being prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs and some children as young as 3 were taking the mood-altering medications.
Ms Strayhorn's study found a case where one child had 14 prescriptions for 11 different medications, at a cost of $1,088 a month.
Mr Flood's review of a two-month period of Medicaid records determined that 63,118 children were on stimulants, antidepressants or antipsychotics, with nearly one-third of the kids taking drugs from more than one of the 3 classes of drugs at the same time.
The review of records found that doctors had filed 114,315 claims amounting to more than $17 million for the children.
As a result of the studies, last year, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission established strict guidelines for prescribing psychiatric drugs for children on Medicaid and the state has seen a dramatic reduction in multiple prescriptions.
The really good news is that a great number of Texas children are apparently cured of their mental illnesses because an analysis of the data taken last year shows that within 5 months after the new rules were in place, the number of foster care children prescribed five or more psychiatric drugs fell by 31%.
There are about 1.9 million Texas children on Medicaid, according to the Chronicle.
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