Some health care watchdog groups are concerned about how the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has recently started releasing potentially dangerous drugs on the market. Two of the drugs that have recently been fast-tracked include the gout medication Uloric and one for Parkinson’s named Nuplazid. Both have been criticized for causing significant side effects. The FDA fast tracks many unsafe drugs, and this didn’t use to be the case.
FDA Fast-Tracked Drugs That Aren’t Safe
A few examples of fast-tracked drugs that were never safe for consumption include:
Uloric
Patients that participated in two of three different Uloric clinical studies either suffered strokes, heart failure or attacks after taking the drug. Patients who either took an alternative drug or none experienced these same adverse side effects at much lower rates than those who took Uloric.
Nuplazid
Although it’s been described as being able to help Parkinson’s disease patients with their delusions and hallucinations, the drug Nuplazid failed to help patients overcome these conditions when tested twice during clinical trails. It only passed a third trial by a thin margin after the method for measuring its effectiveness was revised.
Patients taking the drug also developed serious side effects or died at higher rates while on Nuplazid than those who didn’t receive any treatment at all.
Effects of FDA Fast-Tracking Dangerous Drugs
Despite performing poorly during testing and having adverse side effects, the FDA ultimately approved these drugs to be released on the market.
Nuplazid was first authorized to be prescribed by doctors in the U.S. in 2016. While it’s unclear how many people have taken the drug since then, as of the final day of March this year, 887 people had died while on it. Another 6,800 adverse patient events had also been reported.
As recently as November, Uloric’s manufacturer had notified the FDA that its own researchers had determined that those who took the drug were one-third more likely to lose their lives to heart disease than others taking other medications for gout.
While it may seem logical that the FDA would recall dangerous drugs like Nuplazid and Uloric, they often compile and review data over an extended period of time before deciding to pull it from the market. A Houston defective drugs attorney can help those who took these prescription medications recover compensation for their injuries or death.
