08/25/99
Medication Mixups Cause Concern
By PHIL GALEWITZ -- AP Business Write
NEW YORK (AP) _ Celebrex, the hot-selling new arthritis pill,
sounds a lot like Celexa, a depression treatment, and Cerebyx, an
anti-seizure drug. And it's not just patients who are confused.
Since Celebrex was launched in January, federal regulators have
received 95 reports of errors by doctors and pharmacists in
dispensing Celebrex _ problems blamed on health professionals
confusing the painkiller with similarly named drugs.
None of the cases involve serious injury or death. But the two
companies that jointly sell Celebrex _ Monsanto Co. and Pfizer Inc.
_ have recently started trying to clear up the confusion with an
educational campaign aimed at doctors and pharmacists.
``This is an accident waiting to happen,'' said Hedy Cohen, vice
president of nursing at the Institute for Safe Medication
Practices, a Huntington Valley, Pa., nonprofit group that tracks
medication errors. ``It's a matter of time until a person that is
already sick gets the wrong drug and the chance for a serious
injury can occur.''
This spring, Celebrex became the fastest-selling new drug ever,
with about 9.3 million prescriptions written so far. It is on track
to have more than $1 billion in sales this year, and upwards of $4
billion by 2002, analysts say.
Of the 95 medication mixups reported to the Food and Drug
Administration, only 22 cases involved a patient actually taking
the wrong drug. With the rest, someone caught the error in time.
At the urging of the FDA, Monsanto and Pfizer have paid for
advertisements in major medical journals to make sure doctors and
pharmacists understand the difference between the sound-alike drugs
and the need to verify they are giving out the right pill. The
companies' marketing representatives are reinforcing the message
during visits to doctors.
If the problem does not improve, the FDA could make the
companies change the drug's name, which analysts say could threaten
sales. Monsanto has already changed the drug's name once, from
Celebra, after federal regulators said it sounded too much like
other medications.
``We are still concerned about the problem,'' said Jerry
Phillips, an FDA official who assesses the risk of drugs that
already have reached the market. ``This is a significant number of
errors.''
Medical experts say reports to the FDA generally represent a
small proportion of the errors that occur because the reporting
system is voluntary. But Monsanto officials said more mixups occur
with Celebrex because the drug is so popular, and they stressed the
number of actual medication errors is a very small percentage of
the prescriptions written.
Celexa is made by Forest Laboratories, and Cerebyx by
Warner-Lambert.
Monsanto spokeswoman Sally Benjamin Young would not reveal how
much the company is spending on the education campaign, which
started last month.
The companies are advising pharmacists to ask patients about the
drug they are receiving to avoid any errors. The mixups largely
occur because pharmacists cannot read the doctor's handwriting,
pharmacists say.
--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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