Pfizer, Ignoring Evidence, Says Chantix OK For People With Mental Health Issues

Look, I expect Pfizer to fight like hell to protect its stop smoking drug Chantix from going up in smoke, as it were, but yesterday the company's defense of the drug took an odd turn:

"Pfizer Inc. said Thursday it believes its anti-smoking drug Chantix, which has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts, can be prescribed to patients with mental illness.

"In an interview with The Associated Press, Pfizer Senior Medical Director Dr. Martina Flammer, who is also the medical team leader for Chantix, said that patients with a history of mental illness who are considering taking Chantix should let their doctors know of their condition.

"But, 'there is no indication that there is any reason why Chantix should not be taken in this population,' Flammer said."

I'm not sure what counts as an indication for Flammer, but it seems to me that she's not been reading the medical literature. For example, here's a letter to the American Journal of Psychiatry last year, reporting on an otherwise med-compliant person with bipolar disorder who had mania induced by Chantix. And here's the case of a woman who wound up with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, after Chantix made her manic. She'd not had a psych diagnosis before that.

I would think that anyone with a DSM diagnosis, past or present, or who's had a bad response to anti-depressants in the past should be damn cautious about taking Chantix. And their docs should be damn careful about prescribing it to them. I'd say there are plenty of indications for that at this point, regardless of what Pfizer thinks.

Even stranger, at a press conference in New York yesterday, the company tried to link smoking with suicide--as if there aren't a ton of other behaviors that could be tied to suicide--as the WSJ Health Blog notes. This sounds like crazy, desperate talk from Pfizer.