Many of you are aware that there is a complex, class action lawsuit against AstraZeneca in federal district court in Florida. Yesterday, the judge in the case said she'd urge a panel of judges to send 6,000 lawsuits against AZ...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 19, 2009 12:03 AM
I'm beginning this site's winter fundraiser a bit earlier than I'd originally planned for a couple of reasons. One, the last few fundraisers have taken longer than the two weeks or so of the glory day of 2007 and 2008,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 18, 2009 12:05 AM
Yesterday, a letter to the editor appeared in the Chicago Tribune, penned by AZ's chief spokesman Tony Jewell and critical of a recent article in the paper concerning the company's antipsychotic Seroquel. The paper had written about AZ giving $490,000...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 17, 2009 12:03 AM
Back in March, I wrote about a Chicago psychiatrist, Michael Reinstein, who was bugging AstraZeneca for money because he was such a heavy prescriber of Seroquel and who also authored a very dubious study asserting that Seroquel caused patients to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 11, 2009 11:15 AM
I'm in no mood to write today. My headache is gone, but I got yet another reject email from yet another media organization I'd applied to and I am simply not in the mood to put too many sentences together....
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 10, 2009 12:53 PM
News is just out that, as expected, the controversial former Emory University psychiatry department chair Charles Nemeroff has been named chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Nemeroff is infamous for epic conflict of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 5, 2009 11:22 AM
Just out this morning in AZ's third quarter financial results is this little whopper: "Agreement in principle reached with the US Attorney`s Office in Philadelphia to resolve its investigations related to Seroquel sales and marketing practices. This accounts for $520...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 29, 2009 10:34 AM
Late yesterday I got a copy of the JAMA study detailing how kids and teens on atypical antipsychotics are putting on lots of weight very quickly and suffering detriments on just about every metabolic measure researchers looked at (my initial...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 28, 2009 12:03 AM
A study to be published in JAMA tomorrow finds staggering weight gain in kids given antipsychotics. According to the AP: "Children on widely used psychiatric drugs can quickly gain an alarming amount of weight; many pack on nearly 20 pounds...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 27, 2009 11:51 AM
Very big props to Jim Edwards at bnet.com and to whomever handed off some documents to him which reveal that Jim Dailey, then policy director of NAMI Kentucky and a NAMI National Board member, received $600 from AstraZeneca (at the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 22, 2009 03:17 PM
I don't often comment on the ebb and flow of pharma corporate news, but via Pharmalot comes news that AstraZeneca is asking its entire US sales force--some 5,000 to 6,000 people--to "self identify" whether or not they want to accept...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 19, 2009 10:16 AM
AstraZeneca yesterday was found liable by a Kentucky court of ripping off that state's Medicaid program. "AstraZeneca, maker of popular drugs such as Crestor, Nexium and Seroquel, must reimburse Kentucky $14.72 million after overcharging its Medicaid program between November 1999...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 16, 2009 12:00 PM
It's always flattering in a weird way to know that various pharma companies follow this website--AZ, Lilly, BMS, J&J, Wyeth and so on all pop in from time to time--and yesterday I got an email from Tony Jewell, a spokesman...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 9, 2009 12:03 AM
According to court documents released to Bloomberg yesterday, AstraZeneca pushed its sales reps to claim that Seroquel, the company's atypical antipsychotic, was "weight neutral" four years after the company had determined that there were "clinically significant" weight gains among users...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 8, 2009 12:03 AM
The Federal Trade Commission is going to hold public hearings on creating regulations so that pharma companies can use social media (ie, Facebook, Twitter, networking sites) to promote their drugs. Like they don't have enough promotion opportunities already. I'd assume...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 25, 2009 12:01 AM
Bloomberg is reporting today on documents recently unsealed in federal court in Florida in the ongoing case against AstraZeneca concerning claims that the company did not properly notify the public of risks (principally, diabetes and weight gain) associated with its...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 22, 2009 12:51 PM
This is one of the oddest studies I've seen in a while. It was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry earlier this month and it's literally an example of trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes concerning...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 22, 2009 12:03 AM
Earlier this month, I noted that Washington University psychiatry professor Joan Luby appeared to have possible unreported conflicts of interest on three separate papers, including one on "early childhood depression" that appeared in this month's issue of the American Journal...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 16, 2009 12:01 AM
A new study out in Psychiatric Services asserts that a full 60 percent of antipsychotics prescribed in the VA system in 2007 were being prescribed off-label and, in my opinion, for conditions for which there is little scientific evidence supporting...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 11, 2009 12:03 AM
On Tuesday I wrote of a possible non-disclosure of pharma monies by Joan Luby, a Washington University psychiatry professor, in an August 2009 paper in the Archives of General Psychiatry. In that paper, which asserted that child as young as...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 3, 2009 12:03 AM
Summer is rapidly waning and it's time to begin this site's fall fundraiser. The overall goal is $4,000 from 100 contributors by about September 21. Four contributors have already donated $225 over the last week or so--unsolicited by me I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 1, 2009 12:05 AM
This one is called lurasidone and it's developed by Japan's Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma. The company is so pleased by its phase 3 trials results that it's going to submit it to the FDA early next year for approval as a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 27, 2009 01:08 PM
A new study is out in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety and it asserts that about 50 percent of the time doctors don't know the approval status of certain drugs and, apparently, think they are approved for indications for which they...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 21, 2009 11:38 AM
I bring this up because it's been four months since an FDA advisory panel very reluctantly recommended that the FDA proper approve AstraZeneca's atypical antipsychotic Seroquel (in XR form) as an add-on, or adjunctive treatment, for depression. The same panel...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 11, 2009 08:38 AM
There was a flurry of attention yesterday in the business press around the still-awaiting-approval drug Saphris (asenapine), an atypical antipsychotic made by Schering-Plough. In briefing documents, the FDA's psychiatry products chief Thomas Laughren said that the company had demonstrated effectiveness...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 29, 2009 11:03 AM
A new study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry identifies that many thousands of veterans in the VA system are being given antipsychotics for the treatment of depression, a finding that is startling and unsettling. CL Psych had some thoughts...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 22, 2009 12:03 AM
A study out recently in Bipolar Disorders shows that Seroquel failed to beat, and was in fact beaten by, placebo in treating depression in 32 adolescents aged 12 to 18 and diagnosed with bipolar disorder type 1 who were given...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 14, 2009 12:05 AM
Last month, I wrote of yet another case of Seroquel's growing popularity as a street drug in connection with the shooting death of a man in Massachusetts and, given how many of these Seroquel as street drug stories were popping...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 13, 2009 08:53 AM
A study is just out in The Lancet and it is making an interesting and somewhat bizarre claim: that the atypical antipsychotic Clozaril, long out of favor especially in the US due to safety problems, is in fact safer for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 13, 2009 12:03 AM
This is just disgusting: a South Saint Paul, MN woman allegedly used overdoses of the antipsychotic Seroquel to poison her son and a daughter in addition to herself. Mom and the daughter survived, the son died. Now, mom stands accused...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 10, 2009 12:06 PM
Via If You're Going Through Hell Keep Going comes news that the State of New Jersey has decreed that patients--and presumably employees--will no longer be allowed to smoke on the grounds of its state psychiatric hospitals. It's a move that...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 9, 2009 12:03 AM
I don't know whether to be discouraged by the following news (passed along by an eagle-eyed reader) or to consider it a trend that's to the good yet filled with all kinds of tricky implications, but a study out this...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 2, 2009 12:03 AM
A grand jury in Massachusetts has not returned a criminal indictment against Kayoko Kifuji, a Tufts Medical Center psychiatrist, in connection with the doctor's role in the death of Rebecca Riley, a 4-year-old girl who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 1, 2009 02:45 PM
I know so many people with various mental disorder diagnoses who have taken a benzodiazepine in addition to whatever other medication they were on (and often they were getting a benzo for side effects of, say, anti-depressants) over the years...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 30, 2009 12:03 AM
As I noted yesterday, a few plaintiffs' cases against AstraZeneca over accusations that its antipsychotic Seroquel caused diabetes have been dismissed in Delaware Superior Court recently partly due to a judge's finding that one expert witness could not establish a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 19, 2009 10:30 AM
Recent reports indicate that several of the initial Seroquel cases brought by plaintiffs against AstraZeneca, the antipsychotic's maker, have been dismissed in Delaware Superior Court. Two were dismissed due to a judge's finding that plaintiffs' expert witness could not tie...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 18, 2009 09:17 AM
It's been a bit slow the last couple of days, but it is nice not have any of the usual and newer outrages popping up. Of course, that means look for the FDA to approve Seroquel for depression any day...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 18, 2009 12:01 AM
A new batch of Zyprexa documents was unsealed in US District Court in New York last month, something that escaped my notice due to all the Seroquel documents being released elsewhere. Bloomberg got the documents--which I'll attempt to obtain myself--and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 12, 2009 12:03 AM
Many of you know that an FDA advisory panel yesterday recommended that the agency approve Zyprexa, Seroquel and Geodon--atypical antipsychotics all--for use in teens 13 to 17 with schizophrenia and kids 10 to 17 with alleged pediatric bipolar disorder. I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 11, 2009 12:03 AM
I knew this was going to happen: news is just out that the FDA's psychopharmacology advisory committee today voted to recommend that the FDA approve three atypical antipsychotics for use in treating teens aged 13 to 17 with schizophrenia and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 10, 2009 02:24 PM
Seriously people, this is how embedded the antipsychotic Seroquel has become in our culture both as a psych med and as a street drug--earlier this week a man in Lawrence, Mass. was shot dead while trying to buy Seroquel from...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 10, 2009 12:03 AM
So reports the New York Post in an article on a former prison inmate named Dawud Yaduallah who had his daily Seroquel dose upped by 25 percent while in jail in New York State (the article doesn't say why he...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 9, 2009 12:01 AM
Longtime readers know that from time-to-time I've pointed to published articles, academic and journalistic, identifying how widely Seroquel is being used in prisons and elsewhere and that the drug has developed quite the reputation as a street drug, its peaceful,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 8, 2009 12:03 AM
This article in the Topeka Capital-Journal and what it describes are disgusting, so I'll summarize: parents named tk and tk have a young 3-year-old daughter in Council Grove, Kansas, named Destiny. The parents are former drug addicts and both are...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 8, 2009 12:01 AM
The FDA psychopharmacology advisory committee next week is slated to meet to evaluate safety and efficacy data for three atypical antipsychotics (Seroquel, Geodon and Zyprexa) for use in 13 to 17 year olds diagnosed with schizophrenia and with 10 to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 5, 2009 09:58 AM
According to Reuters, the Netherlands Health Authority, acting as a reference body for the European Union, shot down AstraZeneca's application to have Seroquel approved as a treatment for depression. "The Dutch decision to refuse approval for the medicine in MDD,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 29, 2009 10:46 AM
I'm sure most of you are at least vaguely aware of the case of Richard Borison and Bruce Diamond, a psychiatrist and a researcher at the Medical College of Georgia who were found guilty of ripping off the college to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 27, 2009 12:03 AM
Since Saturday's update another $110 has come in from four people, bring the total raised so far to $905 from 19 contributors. That leaves $3,095 from 81 contributors to go to reach the overall goals of $4,000 from 100 people...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 26, 2009 12:05 AM
Next month, the FDA's psychopharmacology advisory committee takes up AstraZeneca's application to have its atypical antipsychotic Seroquel approved for the treatment of schizophrenia in kids aged 13 to 17 and for use in so-called pediatric bipolar disorder in kids aged...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 26, 2009 12:01 AM
There's been a fascinating two-part series in the Rio Grande Sun concerning what appears to be the over-prescribing and off-label prescribing of Seroquel to jail inmates (part one here, part two here). Were there tons of inmates with schizophrenia? Nope....
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 22, 2009 12:01 AM
I'm going to make this short and not so sweet: AstraZeneca knew just how big the weight gains were for patients taking Seroquel for ages and somehow justified to itself casting the fat-producing, blood sugar-boosting drug as weight neutral. You'll...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 21, 2009 12:03 AM
Many of you remember that in February I broke the story that Wayne Macfadden, a psychiatrist and StraZeneca's US medical officer on Seroquel and the head of CNS research at AZ, had a string of sexual affairs with women intimately...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 20, 2009 01:17 PM
Amidst the just-released batch of Seroquel documents is one dated Dec. 18, 2000, headlined "'Seroquel' Strategy Summary." In it, AstraZeneca executives laid out what they considered key success factors for the drug, which was only approved for schizophrenia at the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 20, 2009 10:46 AM
Another batch of Seroquel documents is being released this morning by plaintiffs attorneys for people suing AstraZeneca over allegations involving its atypical antipsychotic. I'll get them myself this morning and get online what makes sense as soon as I can....
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 20, 2009 12:03 AM
As I do every three months, I am today beginning a fundraiser to support me and the work I do on this site. I know it's not Summer yet, but it's close enough to call it the Summer Fundraiser. The...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 20, 2009 12:01 AM
There's been a lot of criticism of ex-Abilify spokespatient/"Electroboy" author Andy Behrman in the wake of last week's front page Wall Street Journal article about his split with Bristol-Myers Squibb. The company had paid him a reported $400,000 to speak...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 19, 2009 12:01 AM
A good number of you are aware that Andy Behrman, author of "Electroboy," was a spokespatient for Bristol-Myers Squibb's Abilify for a time and, according to yesterday's Wall Street Journal piece on him and his broken relationship with BMS, he...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 15, 2009 12:01 AM
This is one of the most discouraging stories I've read in a while. In March, a father kidnaps his sons (presumably he and their mother were split) and then kills them, then hangs himself. Now, a coroner in Illinois has...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 7, 2009 11:30 AM
The FDA yesterday approved Fanapt (iloperidone), an atypical antipsychotic made by Vanda Pharmaceuticals, for use in the treatment of schizophrenia in adults. I don't know a lot about this drug--it's the first antipsychotic given its initial FDA approval in years--but...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 7, 2009 12:05 AM
Although it's been known for a few weeks that the FDA's psychopharmacology advisory committee would meet in early June to make recommendations to the FDA proper regarding approval of Seroquel, an atypical antipsychotic, for use in children and teens aged...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 7, 2009 12:03 AM
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (known as Psych Rights) yesterday sent letters to several members of Congress, including Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), alleging that since the 1990s Medicaid has been paying for psych meds used in kids off-label and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 6, 2009 12:03 AM
Yesterday, I posted on the fact that 10 percent of people being treated for depression in the US are now being prescribed antipsychotics (Abilify, Seroquel, Risperdal, Zyprexa) and one reader had some thoughts on a Seroquel-related incident. Q is Seroquel...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 30, 2009 12:01 AM
A recent conference call with financial analysts by executives with Bristol-Myers Squibb, makers of Abilify--the antipsychotic that will cure your non-psychotic issues--is revealing. Over 10 percent of Americans now take an atypical antipsychotic for depression, according to the company. Much...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 29, 2009 12:03 AM
I hadn't known AstraZeneca was trialing its top-selling atypical antipsychotic Seroquel as a treatment for anorexia nervosa, but in fact it has two trials underway. A press account of the trial reveals that one patient's "weight is back in a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 24, 2009 12:03 AM
There was a big drug sweep of low level dealers in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania yesterday and along with popping people for allegedly dealing cocaine and pot, cops arrested two people for allegedly dealing Seroquel: "Ashley Thomas Morgan, 21, with no...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 24, 2009 12:01 AM
There's apparently a real trend in our land toward excessive polypharmacy in our elders and this account from Peter Gott's "Family Doctor" syndicated column provides a spooky example of the trend and the overuse of psych meds to "calm" patients....
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 23, 2009 10:15 AM
Liz Spikol, executive editor of the Philadelphia Weekly and mental health blogger, has a very interesting post up today. In it, she describes being approached by a documentary maker to be part of a doc--presumably on a mental health issue--that's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 16, 2009 12:48 PM
I've been holding off writing much about the efficacy and safety data that emerged in connection with last week's FDA psychopharmacology advisory committee hearing as to whether the committee would recommend to the FDA approval of Seroquel XR for a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 15, 2009 12:01 AM
A very interesting and sad account of the April 8 FDA psychopharmacology advisory committee hearing comes from Merrill Goozner's GoozNews: "I was rather shocked as the patient representative -- Margy Lawrence of Potomac, Md. -- on the panel announced her...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 10, 2009 10:12 AM
As many of you know already, an FDA advisory panel yesterday recommended against approval of Seroquel as a monotherapy and as a maintenance treatment for depression and recommended against approval for anxiety. In each case, it found the drug not...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 9, 2009 12:03 AM
News is just out that the FDA's psychopharmacology advisory panel has recommended that the agency approve Seroquel, an atypical antipsychotic, as an add-on or adjunctive treatment for depression, meaning to be taken in addition to anti-depressants. It recommended against approval...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 8, 2009 01:47 PM
Yesterday, Bnet.com reported that 14 pharma companies had gotten warning letters from the FDA, which noted that the companies were misrepresenting their drugs' indications and were hiding side effect and risk information in various text ads that popped up during...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 8, 2009 12:03 AM
As I've reported before, Seroquel is often used by prisoners--and some civilians in the outside world--to get stoned in prison and apparently so too is Wellbutrin, the well-known anti-depressant. The Wellbutrin bit is news to me. Things have gotten so...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 7, 2009 09:27 AM
Some of you are aware that on Saturday the Philadelphia Inquirer had an excellent article which established that the chair of the FDA's Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, Florida child psychiatrist Jorge Armenteros, who was set to chair this week's committee...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 6, 2009 12:03 AM
Today the FDA released briefing documents for next week's psychopharmacology advisory committee hearing on whether to approve Seroquel for three depression indications and generalized anxiety. In the documents, the FDA psychiatry products chief stated: "'There remains a concern about longer-term...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 3, 2009 04:05 PM
It's snowing in Seattle today and it's clear we've got a winter this year that just won't quit. But it's not just that. The American economy is in total meltdown, we've got a new President who makes me very uneasy,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 1, 2009 11:08 AM
The following is my written testimony which I submitted yesterday to the FDA's Psychopharmacology Advisory Committee. On April 8, the committee will hold a hearing on AstraZeneca's applications to have Seroquel approved for three different depression indications as well as...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 27, 2009 12:03 AM
As noted elsewhere today, I've obtained a copy of Seroquel Study 15 which was conducted in the mid-1990s and which AstraZeneca suppressed and did not submit anywhere for publication, as the Washington Post and others have reported. The study was...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 20, 2009 12:05 AM
I've obtained a copy of Seroquel Study 15, which AstraZeneca never published. It's a study of Seroquel's use in treating psychosis versus Haldol, finished in 1996 and submitted to the FDA as part of Seroquel's initial approval for use in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 20, 2009 12:03 AM
The St. Paul Pioneer Press has a fine article out today detailing how one University of Minnesota psychiatry professor, Charles Schulz, claimed that Seroquel's performance was superior to older drugs like Haldol when in fact the research data he was...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 19, 2009 01:09 PM
There was an odd article in yesterday's Washington Post concerning suppressed Seroquel studies. It appeared on A-1 and was authored by Shankar Vedantam, who usually does good work. But this time out, not so much. First, the story is old...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 19, 2009 12:03 AM
The FDA psychopharmacology advisory committee is holding hearings on AstraZeneca's applications to have its antipsychotic Seroquel approved by the FDA for one of three depression indications (including long-term maintenance) and anxiety. If you want to make your voice heard on...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 17, 2009 01:32 PM
As many of you know the FDA's psychopharmacology advisory committee is holding hearings on AstraZeneca's request to have the agency approve Seroquel for three depression indications and generalized anxiety disorder. The committee wants to hear from the public and here's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 17, 2009 12:01 AM
Late last week, Jim Edwards at BNET.com had a fine piece detailing some of the sex-for-Seroquel-studies emails which I first reported on last month. It appears, as I reported back then, that Wayne Macfadden, AstraZeneca's former US Seroquel medical director,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 16, 2009 11:54 AM
Yes, you read that right: AstraZeneca, maker of Seroquel, is tossing everything it has at legal cases claiming the company's drug gave people who took it diabetes. Back when Eli Lilly was initially defending itself against similar claims involving Zyprexa,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 16, 2009 11:03 AM
Most of you are aware that AstraZeneca applied last year with the FDA to have Seroquel, it's $4.4 billion a year antipsychotic, approved as a treatment for three different depression indications as well as for generalized anxiety disorder. It's a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 10, 2009 12:05 AM
There's no more controversial case in the mental health world than that of the 2006 death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley, a Massachusetts girl who was diagnosed with alleged child bipolar disorder at the age of 2 and was put on...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 6, 2009 09:34 AM
One reason I'm glad I made the Seroquel documents publicly available the other day is because I knew people like Jim Edwards at BNET.com would go dig through them and post their findings, saving me from writing too much about...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 4, 2009 12:03 AM
There's a commentary in the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, gingerly addressing the conflict of interest scandals roiling psychiatry--and bringing it to its knees, in the words of Tufts' University's Danny Carlat--and one of the very psychiatric...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 4, 2009 12:01 AM
As I mentioned last week, the FDA's psychopharmacology advisory panel is going to review the possible approval of Seroquel for three depression indications and anxiety in early April. My hunch was that the clinical trials must be producing loads of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 3, 2009 11:29 AM
Another $510 came in yesterday from six contributors bringing the total raised to $2,887 from 63 contributors. That leaves $1,113 from 37 contributors to go before the overall goal of $4,000 from 100 contributors is met on or about March...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 3, 2009 12:05 AM
Bloomberg reported yesterday that after being ordered to warn doctors in Japan about Seroquel in 2002, AstraZeneca continued to insist in the US market that there was no link to diabetes. "The London-based drugmaker issued a letter to Japanese physicians...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 3, 2009 12:03 AM
I received the following statement from Tony Jewell, an AZ spokesman: "AstraZeneca has studied Seroquel extensively and shared all relevant and required data with the FDA -- both before and after the agency approved it as safe and effective. The...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 2, 2009 12:43 PM
Another $125 came in yesterday from three contributors, which brings things to $2,377 raised so far from 57 contributors and leaves $1,623 from 43 contributors to go to reach the overall goal of $4,000 from 100 contributors on or about...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 2, 2009 12:05 AM
As I mentioned elsewhere today, the major media has done a decent job of covering the Seroquel documents released by a federal judge last week. Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal were first out of the chute on Friday, soon...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 2, 2009 12:03 AM
As many of you know, a bunch of documents in the federal lawsuit against AstraZeneca over allegations surrounding its drug Seroquel were released in open court Feb. 26. The next day, I obtained the entire set of pdfs and after...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 2, 2009 12:01 AM
A brief note to let you know that yesterday and so far today $590 has come in from 12 contributors, bringing the total raised so far to $2,252 from 54 contributors. That leaves $1,748 from 46 contributors to go to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 28, 2009 01:39 PM
Another $485 came in yesterday from 10 contributors, bringing the total raised so far to $1,662 from 42 people. That leaves $2,338 from 58 contributors to go to reach the fundraiser's goal of $4,000 from 100 contributors on or about...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 27, 2009 12:05 AM
From this morning's Wall Street Journal: " ORLANDO, Fla. -- AstraZeneca PLC instructed its U.S. sales representatives to tell doctors that its powerful psychiatric drug, Seroquel, didn't cause diabetes even though a company physician had at one point stated years...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 27, 2009 12:03 AM
This came to me too late at night for me to do much poking around. From Bloomberg: "Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Unfavorable studies about the antipsychotic drug Seroquel were 'buried' by AstraZeneca Plc, according to an internal e-mail unsealed as...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 27, 2009 12:01 AM
Another $120 came in yesterday from four contributors. That brings the total raised to $1,177 from 32 contributors and that leaves $2,823 and 68 to go by the end of March 6, which is next Friday. That leaves nine days....
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 26, 2009 12:05 AM
I know I'm merely a wee journalist on the West Coast and what I think about things doesn't matter very much to anyone, but the piece I wrote yesterday on a major conflict of interest around AstraZeneca's former Seroquel medical...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 26, 2009 12:01 AM
Another $80.74 came in yesterday from two contributors. That brings the total raised so far to $1,057 from 28 contributors. That leaves just under $3,000 to go from another 72 contributors by March 6. That's only 10 days to go....
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 25, 2009 12:05 AM
There's been much news of conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and outside researchers possibly biasing the results of studies of psychiatric drugs over the last year. Notably, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has exposed researchers at Harvard University, Emory University...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 25, 2009 12:01 AM
News is just out this morning that the parents of Rebecca Riley, a four-year-old diagnosed with alleged child bipolar disorder and ADHD who died in December 2006, are to have first-degree murder charges reinstated against them, after a ruling by...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 23, 2009 10:28 AM
I'm not making this up. Yesterday, California Attorney General Jerry Brown filed a criminal complaint against three officials at a Lake Isabella, California nursing home. From the Los Angeles Times: "The state attorney general's office contended in a criminal complaint...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 20, 2009 12:03 AM
So John McManamy has gone and done it--gone and called my writing "dumb antipsychiatry." Seriously, you can check out that humdinger right here. McManamy is the author of "Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder," but one wonders how well...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 20, 2009 12:01 AM
Today, I am beginning the spring fundraiser for this site. Yes, I know it's still technically winter, but the fundraiser in early December was dubbed winter, so this one shall be spring. I'm starting this fundraiser five days earlier than...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 18, 2009 12:05 AM
As I noted yesterday, lawyers for AstraZeneca, makers of Seroquel, moved last week to seal numerous documents in a forthcoming federal court case involving the company and its $4.5 billion a year drug and to close an upcoming court hearing...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 18, 2009 12:03 AM
I've been hammering on issues around children's mental health on this site for pushing three years now and have long made the point that much of the medicating of children in our culture (and I mean prepubescent here) is happening...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 18, 2009 12:01 AM
UPDATE, 2/17/09, 9:28 a.m. PST: Apparently, AstraZeneca reads this website as, this morning, Tony Jewell, a company spokesman, passed along a letter to editor of the St. Petersburg Times, which was published earlier today. Basically, the company claims that the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 17, 2009 12:05 AM
There was a fairly alarming article in the New York Times about how some allegedly natural diet pills are turning out to have all manner of drugs in them. One celeb who mouthed support for StarCaps was Kathie Lee Gifford,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 12, 2009 12:03 AM
After putting up the original post, I went back and slightly changed the portion where I discuss RS's handling of patient accounts in the article. I had overstated something and wanted to correct it. PD Two weeks ago, I noted...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 12, 2009 12:01 AM
There's been a lot of news out lately about how Wall Street bankers are pulling down millions in bonuses despite running their banks into the ground, and now it's Big Pharma's turn to look just as brilliant. According to FiercePharma.com,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 11, 2009 01:31 PM
Almost two weeks ago, I saw a news story on TV one night reporting that someone had jumped into Lake Washington, cried for help, but that police had been unable to locate the person. The lake is damn cold this...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 11, 2009 12:03 AM
Yesterday I filed an adverse event report with the FDA related to my 14 month use of the atypical antipsychotic Seroquel. Here's what I told the FDA: "I began taking Seroquel at 25 mgs. a day in April 2004 for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 3, 2009 12:38 PM
Many of you are aware of the blog Beyond Meds and its author Gianna Kali. For those of you who aren't, the short story is that Kali was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the 1980s and was hammered with high...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 3, 2009 12:05 AM
I wanted to quickly note that two lawsuits against AstraZeneca over claims that the company's drug Seroquel caused the plaintiffs to develop diabetes were thrown on by a federal judge last week. The two cases were part of a class...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 3, 2009 12:01 AM
Last week, I noted a press report indicating that the FDA had asked AstraZeneca, makers of Seroquel, to update its labeling to indicate risks of "significant weight gain" experienced by some patients taking the drug. The weight gain issue is...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 2, 2009 11:46 AM
AstraZeneca, maker of Seroquel, and Eli LIlly, maker of Zyprexa and Cymbalta, today both reported their 2008 financial results. For AZ (pdf here), global Seroquel revenues were up 11 percent over 2007 to $4.452 billion. US Sales of the drug...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 29, 2009 01:10 PM
Yesterday, I wrote that the FDA was ordering AstraZeneca, maker of Seroquel, to update its labeling to reflect "significant weight gain" experienced by patients, a potential precursor to diabetes and other metabolic syndrome issues (the agency has still not answered...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 29, 2009 12:01 AM
I was pleased last week when President Barack Obama pledged to make the federal government more open, accountable and transparent to the American people. But, sadly, that message seems to be lost on one of the most opaque, we-work-for-industry-not-the-public agencies...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 28, 2009 12:05 AM
Yesterday, the Bloomberg wire service reported that the FDA recently wrote to AstraZeneca, makers of Seroquel, and ordered the company to update its labeling for the drug to include a warning of "significant weight gain" due to use of the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 28, 2009 12:03 AM
Some of you are likely aware of the syndicated column "The People's Pharmacy," which I often find interesting, and which has often taken a deeply-skeptical stance on various psych meds. In this week's column, the authors go after atypical antipsychotics...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 26, 2009 12:01 AM
According to this press release, three more lawsuits were filed in federal court in Florida earlier this week on behalf of patients who allege that they developed diabetes as a result of taking the atypical antipsychotic Seroquel. In a separate...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 23, 2009 12:05 AM
Peter Gott is one of a few doctors who does a syndicated Q&A type of column nationally and he recently took up a question from a reader about whether Seroquel should be given to elderly person with dementia and whether...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 23, 2009 12:03 AM
I'm not even sure what lede to write for this post, but the basic story is that a couple of days ago David Dobbs, a well-known science writer whose work I admire, wrote on his new blog "Neuron Culture" (separate...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 22, 2009 01:36 AM
Over the last few days, I've run into some gut-churning pieces written by two youngish people, each wrestling separately with demon medications (or at least they are for them). First up is Zachary Taylor (God, I love that name), who's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 13, 2009 12:03 AM
Last week, the New York Times had an interesting article on a large number of violent incidents, including murder, involving Iraq War vets stationed at Fort Carson, Colo. It's the usual story of post-combat stress--or PTSD, if you prefer--and an...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 6, 2009 12:03 AM
This time out it's in Louisian: "Authorities went to Rugley’s residence Thursday to place him under arrest, at which time Rugley was allowed to get his coat. A search of the coat pockets revealed a pill bottle containing 150 Seroquel...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 16, 2008 12:05 AM
Two psychiatrists, some neuroscientists, ethicists and the editor of Nature opined in the journal yesterday that America needs to grapple with the "responsible" use of performance-enhancing brain drugs in healthy people. One of the authors is Ron Kessler, a psychiatrist...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 8, 2008 12:03 AM
News is just out that the FDA has caught AstraZeneca marketing its star atypical antipsychotic Seroquel off-label for depression. Under federal law, drug companies are not allowed to directly market drugs to doctors or to consumers for anything other than...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 5, 2008 09:48 AM
Bloomberg is reporting that AstraZeneca officials knew of diabetes risks associated with the use of its atypical antipsychotic Seroquel as far back as 2000. The news comes thanks to a small set of documents presented in open court yesterday in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 5, 2008 09:09 AM
A fascinating study and accompanying editorial just came out in The Lancet yesterday. In the NIMH-funded study, researchers performed a meta-analysis of 150 studies of atypical antipsychotics--Zyprexa, Risperdal, Seroquel, etc.--where they had been trialed against a first generation antipsychotic in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 5, 2008 12:01 AM
As I do every three months, today I'm beginning this site's winter fundraiser. The goal is to raise $3,000 over the next two weeks. The fall fundraiser was a big success and ended early, and I hope that's the case...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 1, 2008 12:05 AM
I have corrected this post at NPR's request as I had incorrectly identified "The Infinite Mind" as being NPR-distributed when in fact it was only on NPR's Sirius channel. I've changed the description to "NPR-connected." To clarify further for readers,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 24, 2008 12:03 AM
This ">story is way beyond sad in just about every sense of the word. Sandra May McIntyre, who grew up in Maine and later changed her name to Paula Goodspeed, had an obsession with singing and becoming a star and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 24, 2008 12:01 AM
As I noted on Monday, an FDA committee of outside experts was set to review the use of the atypical antipsychotic Zyprexa in teens. The meeting, according to the New York Times, turned into quite the affair with doctors denouncing...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 19, 2008 12:03 AM
Thanks to a reader for passing along this fascinating and saddening article from Chicago about an Iraq War veteran who's wound up homeless due to PTSD and for whom the Veteran's Administration has had a classic, All-American response: "Larson has...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 18, 2008 10:53 AM
I've been following the discouraging saga of Iraq War vets diagnosed with PTSD who've died suddenly in their sleep, apparently as a result of some of the psych meds they were being given or due to an interaction between the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 13, 2008 11:43 AM
Some of you know that yesterday Google announced that it was working with the CDC to monitor flu-related searches in its search engine ("flu," "flu symptoms," "muscle aches") and, further, to pinpoint what part of the country the searches are/were...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 12, 2008 12:03 AM
Sorry for the late start today, folks, but this ought to get your heart pounding faster: Pharmalot, which apparently got tipped off, reports that: "An AstraZeneca regional sales manager allegedly directed the sales reps in her region to use some...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 6, 2008 11:51 AM
That's right folks. The FDA just approved a new injection site for Risperdal CONSTA--in the biceps instead of the previously-approved gluteus. There's progress. And Seroquel XL--the newish extended release version--was just approved by the FDA for bipolar depression and acute...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 11, 2008 12:59 PM
I spoke yesterday with representatives from the Illinois and Oregon AG's offices, trying to clarify a few matters about yesterday's $62 million settlement with Lilly over off-label marketing of Zyprexa. The settlement covers 32 states plus the District of Columbia....
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 8, 2008 12:03 AM
I've been writing about the dirtiest little secret of antipsychotics for some time now, namely that they cause brain shrinkage in some (I'm assuming it's not all) patients and animal studies, so it was rather bracing yesterday to read this...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 18, 2008 12:05 AM
The FDA is just out with a list of drugs it identified as having major issues which the agency needs to investigate, based upon data from the first quarter of the year. Two psych meds make the list of 20...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 5, 2008 12:16 PM
The press release machine that is WebMD has this on a new study of Seroquel in anxiety: "In the new study, 854 generalized anxiety disorder patients were given either Seroquel XR, Lexapro (a prescription drug approved to treat generalized anxiety...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 5, 2008 12:03 AM
Today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a lengthy article examining "another failure" of Washington State's system for handling people with mental illnesses. The article was spurred by the recent mass murder north of Seattle. In some respects, the article does a decent...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 4, 2008 10:26 AM
I'm really not sure what to make of this Swedish study, so here's what's being reported by the AP: "Children born to older fathers face a greater chance of developing bipolar disorder, according to one of the largest studies linking...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 2, 2008 10:16 AM
I continue to be fascinated by how psych meds--and particularly the atypical antipsychotic Seroquel--have wormed their ways into American culture and in how Seroquel has become a drug that, when snorted or shot, can get people low in a way...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 2, 2008 12:03 AM
According to the Pittsburgh Press-Gazette, five lawsuits were filed in federal court yesterday in Pittsburgh against AstraZeneca, makers of the atypical antipsychotic Seroquel. "The lawsuits claim negligence, fraud and intentional misrepresentation. 'The marketing and promotion efforts of AstraZeneca, through its...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 28, 2008 12:07 AM
Between 2002 and 2007, Canadian health regulators issued a slew of warnings on the use of antipsychotics in the elderly--so did American regulators between 2004 and this year--and yet the use of drugs like Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel actually increased...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 26, 2008 12:03 AM
Yesterday, I reported that the FDA's psychiatry products chief, Thomas Laughren, and the FDA itself were refusing to answer questions about pediatric bipolar disorder which the agency had two weeks previously determined unilaterally was a valid diagnosis. The FDA's move...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 15, 2008 09:16 AM
As I've been noting on this site for over 18 months, the blockbuster antipsychotic Seroquel is doing double-duty as a street drug. It's a downer-ish drug, snorted or injected, and is gaining some popularity as a replacement for OxyContin, which...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 7, 2008 12:03 AM
There's a good, lengthy article in yesterday's News Journal (Wilmington, Del.) on just how big a drug the atypical antipsychotic Seroquel has become ($4 billion in sales), how central it is to AstraZeneca's profits, how the drug has been widely...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 4, 2008 12:17 PM
I wanted to clear up a few misconceptions that seem to have cropped up around my posting on being off-meds for bipolar disorder for one year. First, it is not a path I am suggesting others follow. There's no way...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 23, 2008 12:03 AM
This is one of those weird, sad stories I pass along in order to track just how strangely psych meds have become embedded in our culture. In Florida, two women have pleaded guilty to murder and gotten 30 year sentences....
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 10, 2008 10:45 AM
A new article in the Psychiatric Times by an Italian and British researcher finds little support for the use of anti-depressants in treating the depressive side of bipolar disorder. The articles makes its argument very cautiously since its core assertion...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 25, 2008 10:15 AM
Over the weekend, there was a long, discouraging article in the Austin American Statesman detailing the unexplained death of a young Marine from Texas at Twentynine Palms, Calif. He'd been taking a host of meds for PTSD, including Seroquel and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 17, 2008 12:05 AM
Last week US News & World report had a fascinating Q&A with Larry Diller, clinical professor at UCSF who practices pediatric psychiatry in Walnut Creek, Calif. (oddly enough, the town I was born in). Diller is a semi-controversial figure in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 17, 2008 12:03 AM
AstraZeneca today submitted its atypical antipsychotic Seroquel XR to the European Union for approval as a maintenance treatment for major depression. This follows recent US submittals to the FDA of the same drug for three separate depression indications. The company...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 10, 2008 08:09 AM
It's been interesting and sometimes jaw-dropping over the last few years to watch how fully various "behavioral health" medications--by which I mean psych meds--have been repurposed for everything from shyness to low libido to public speaking anxiety. There's a nice...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 3, 2008 09:57 AM
Earlier this month, a study came out asserting that bipolar disorder was being overdiagnosed. About 50 percent of the patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder in a study in Rhode Island turned out to have been wrongly diagnosed once they were...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 28, 2008 10:48 AM
I really don't know what other headline to put on this Archives of Internal Medicine paper that came out yesterday from researchers showing that patients with dementia face a risk of death or other serious event at more than 3...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 27, 2008 12:05 AM
UPDATED: 1:48 p.m. PST with AZ's response. Arkansas State AG Dustin McDaniel yesterday brought suit against AstraZeneca for illegal marketing and fraud, among other charges, in its sales of Seroquel to various agencies in the State. The suit, which somewhat...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 21, 2008 11:00 AM
I'm just hearing now that Arkansas State AG Dustin McDaniel has filed suit against AstraZeneca claiming that the drugmaker pressed doctors to prescribe Seroquel even where it wasn't required. The state has previously sued the makers of Risperdal and Zyprexa....
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 21, 2008 09:10 AM
I've complained on this site before about the odd phenomenon of Google searches for "seroquel snorting," "shooting seroquel" and the like coming to this site, principally because I have made stray mentions in the past of the drug's underground status...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 21, 2008 12:19 AM
Yes, you read that correctly. State records in Minnesota--which requires public disclosure of payouts to docs---indicate that psychiatrists in the state have received $88 million in gifts, grants and fees from Big Pharma since 2002. This comes from the St....
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 20, 2008 07:56 AM
Two excellent articles in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press today examining the very ugly case of a young man who had a first episode of psychosis and was admitted to care by a doctor who basically shoehorned him into a study...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 19, 2008 08:49 AM
This is a sad story out of Fresno, Calif. On April 16, Jesus "Jesse" Carrizales, 17, who was supposedly taking Lexapro and one of a number of antipsychotics (Geodon, Risperdal or Seroquel) for depression attacked a campus police officer with...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 19, 2008 12:32 AM
This is a remarkable account of a woman in Texas who'd smoked for 33 years and was pressed to take Chantix, Pfizer's stop smoking pill that sure keeps acting like the worst of the SSRIs, by her doctor. The woman...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 17, 2008 11:41 AM
Thanks to CL Psych who flagged this issue the other day and posted one academic paper acknowledging that not only are there weird problems such as genital anesthesia--such a polite term--connected with anti-depressant use in some cases, but that the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 15, 2008 12:05 AM
Some of you may recall that in late 2006 I wrote a series of posts casting doubt on some of the statistics in the BOLDER II trial of Seroquel. The trial was a part of the drug's approval for bipolar...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 15, 2008 12:01 AM
AstraZeneca announced today the FDA has approved Seroquel, its $4 billion year in sales atypical antipsychotic, as a maintenance treatment for bipolar disorder used in conjunction with either Lithium of valproic acid (aka Depakote). Getting the drug approved as a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 14, 2008 12:18 PM
That's quite a term for the Adderall taking and snorting that's apparently sweeping across college campuses and which is detailed in Northern Illinois University's Northern Star. I'm not sure if it's an apt term, but it sure is catchy. "Mild...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 13, 2008 12:03 AM
Most of you are well aware that AstraZeneca has been trotting out data--not especially impressive data BTW--touting its antipsychotic Seroquel as a treatment for depression and generalized anxiety disorder. The drug is already approved for treating schizophrenia, mania in bipolar...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 8, 2008 12:03 AM
A reader commented yesterday: "I took 200 mgs. of Seroquel daily for two years after a questionable diagnosis for Bipolar II (manic symptoms appeared only after treatment with antidepressants or with high doses of IV steroids). Now, a year after...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 7, 2008 12:03 AM
About two months ago, AstraZeneca filed three separate new drug applications with the FDA to have Seroquel XR--the extended release version of bad old Seroquel--approved as a treatment for depression as monotherapy, adjunct therapy, and maintenance therapy. I noted at...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 6, 2008 12:01 AM
I've been waiting a while to write this: in late March and early April, I was depressed and it wasn't one of those little two-day dips that I've grown accustomed to the last several years. This was the real thing:...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 2, 2008 12:05 AM
As the bad news continues to build in the scientific literature about how weak anti-depressants are, some researchers continue to pound on the idea that if at first an anti-depressant doesn't work, then try, try again. Here's a newish paper...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 25, 2008 12:03 AM
I'd planned a series of posts today on all sorts of things, but I got waylaid last night after going to an old friend's for dinner. We were sitting in her yard in some very brief evening sunshine and she...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 22, 2008 09:08 AM
We have reached a very pretty pass in our culture when psych meds are a medium of exchange. From the wonderful land of Boulder, Colo. where some middle school students were trying to trade ADHD meds for alcohol: "Three juveniles...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 21, 2008 02:23 PM
Danny Carlat, whom many of you know through his website and his "Dr. Drug Rep" article of last year, is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts University and is in private practice. Anyhow, Carlat recently had a visit from...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 11, 2008 12:03 AM
A bizarre incident in Mississippi: a middle school student gave the antipsychotic Seroquel to several friends, the friends took the drug, the students began acting oddly, the students were taken to a hospital, and the student who gave them the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 4, 2008 09:34 AM
A report by a British MP, Paul Burstow, claims that the use of antipsychotics in patients with dementia is leading to 23,000 deaths a year in the UK, according to this account of the report in the Telegraph (London). This...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 1, 2008 11:24 AM
In a new study just out in The Lancet, Dutch researchers report that second generation antipsychotics (aka, atypicals) do not beat first generation antipsychotics in treating symptoms of schizophrenia in first-episode patients. And if they can't beat the old drugs...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 28, 2008 12:05 AM
I am not making this up: An account in the Patriot Ledger of a drug bust in Massachusetts describes the atypical antipsychotic Seroquel thusly: "Detectives found numerous prescription pills--the heroin substitutes Suboxone and Seroquel--as well as heroin, cash and plastic...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 19, 2008 02:07 PM
Decision Resources, a market analyst firm, is out with a report on the market for atypical antipsychotics, which the company estimates at $15.9 billion in 2007 with growth projected to $17.8 billion in 2011. That's a lot of doped up...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 5, 2008 12:03 PM
A couple of things. Thanks to the reader (or was it readers?) who threw the bipolar blood test post of a few days ago up on StumbleUpon yesterday. I've been getting slammed with hits ever since. Speaking of hits, February...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 1, 2008 02:08 PM
The FDA today approved the atypical antipsychotics Abilify for use in treating bipolar disorder in kids as young as 10 years old. Of course, there's much controversy in the land about what age a doctor can properly diagnose bipolar disorder...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 29, 2008 09:42 AM
UPDATE: Mere hours after I posted the following, AstraZeneca filed a supplemental new drug application for Seroquel XR, the extended release version of Seroquel, for treating depression under 3 different indications: monotherapy, adjunct therapy, and maintenance therapy in adult patients....
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 29, 2008 12:03 AM
Montana AG Mike McGrath on Wednesday filed suit against Janssen/J&J and AstraZeneca over allegation relating to Risperdal and Seroquel. I haven't had time to review the suit yet, but here's one press account: "He charged that the two companies 'have...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 22, 2008 12:57 PM
I noted last week that I hadn't heard of any cases of Brits assaulting their mental health care givers. Spoke too soon. This week a retiree from County Derry (and, yes, I am highly aware that Ireland is independent, but...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 22, 2008 12:03 AM
The swirl of news around Britney Spears has gone from weird to weirder still, according to news accounts of a move by the singer's father to get a restraining order against her new manager. Spears, who allegedly has bipolar disorder,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 6, 2008 12:01 AM
That's the word from the New York Times yesterday. To whit, that Lilly and the Department of Justice and Lilly and the many states preparing to sue the company are in settlement talks. A settlement with both groups would absolve...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 31, 2008 12:05 AM
Ever since Arkansas AG Dustin McDaniel filed suit against J&J/Janssen in November I've been trying to get someone at his office to discuss the lawsuit with me. The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that J&J/Janssen cooked its clinical trials of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 28, 2008 01:31 AM
First, thanks to all of you for your kind thoughts regarding my six-month anniversary of being off-meds. I happened to put the same post up on Daily Kos and got several fascinating replies, including this one from Paul Minot, a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 22, 2008 01:04 AM
As most readers know, Big Pharma is sure interested in having its anti-psychotics used for treating depression. While I cannot argue with the short-term use of atypicals for treating depression, I find it appalling that we could well have a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 2, 2008 11:00 AM
So New Year's is approaching and I wanted to thank all of you for your readership and support of this site in 2007, especially during my fracas with Lord Google and the very heated controversies around the bipolar child debate....
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 31, 2007 12:00 PM
David Healy and his colleague Joanna Le Noury have a new paper out, which examines the rise of bipolar disorder in both adults and children and puts it all in some kind of historical context. It's a lengthier examination of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 13, 2007 12:05 AM
I'm off to take care of several things, so I wanted to pass along links to some interesting bits and pieces. Apparently, AstraZeneca and a researcher in Texas have filed a patent application for curing cocaine addiction by using Seroquel....
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 12, 2007 10:47 AM
When I was in Florida two weeks ago, one of the New College students asked how I felt about bipolar disorder and since it came near the end of a lengthy evening and is a complicated question to begin with,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 11, 2007 12:03 AM
ABC News had an interesting piece last week in which counselors working with Iraq vets with pain, PTSD and depression issues accuse the military of overmedicating troops. In some cases, soldiers are ending up addicted to painkillers. Here's one soldier's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 10, 2007 12:03 AM
The Wall Street Journal is just out with a front page article on the use of anti-psychotics in nursing home patients, literally hours after the BBC's "Panorama" ran a similarly-themed program in the UK. Here are some bits from the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 4, 2007 12:07 AM
Vaughan at Mind Hacks had a good post on the looming battle between makers of atypical antipsychotics and the various states who have sued them (11 so far), and the ones who are expected to in a multi-state action (25...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 26, 2007 12:05 AM
I was tied up yesterday getting ready to leave town, so here's something I haven't done in two months or so--links to things I've found interesting recently. Not that there aren't about a bazillion other things I could link to....
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 26, 2007 12:01 AM
The State of Arkansas today filed a lawsuit against Janssen and J&J over allegations that the company "engaged in a direct, illegal, nationwide program of promotion of the use of Risperdal for non-medically necessary uses." In other words, off-label marketing--specific...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 20, 2007 12:21 PM
Earlier today, the FDA approved Seroquel XR--the extended release version of the atypical anti-psychotic Seroquel--for use as a maintenance treatment in adults with schizophrenia. What with all the new FDA approvals going on or imminent for the atypicals--Abilify for kids...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 16, 2007 10:43 AM
Christopher Lane, whom I interviewed on this site last month, has an adapted section of his book, Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, running in the WashPo today. It gives an accounting of how we got from shyness--or anxiety...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 6, 2007 12:08 PM
A new study in this month's Archives of General Psychiatry asserts that atypical, or second generation, antipsychotics used in patients with Alzheimer's disease produced about the same results as did placebos in the same patient cohort. Which is to say...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 6, 2007 12:07 AM
GlaxoSmithKline's anti-depressant gepirone was recently deemed unapprovable by the FDA, which has to be something of a blow for GSK. And anyhow aren't antipsychotics now all the rage for pharma companies to get approved for depression treatment a la Seroquel...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 5, 2007 12:05 AM
That headline should shock you, but according to a new study by researchers at the University of South Florida, roughly half of the antipsychotics used in Florida's state Medicaid program are given to children aged 0 to 12 years old...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 1, 2007 12:05 AM
I've been catching stray references to allegations of Zyprexa-induced suicides. I already know that there are similar accusations involving Seroquel, an atypical antipsychotic, but was less clear about Zyprexa. Some of the problem with Zyprexa seems to stem from its...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 23, 2007 12:05 AM
Yesterday, AstraZeneca released results of a long-term study using Seroquel plus Lithium or Depakote as a maintenance drug. In a press release the company claimed: "A large-scale, international, double-blind study (Study 126) investigated the time to recurrence of a mood...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 17, 2007 12:05 AM
Forest Labs--makers of Celexa and Lexapro--today announced that a new antipsychotic compound designed to treat schizophrenia failed to outperform placebo in a recent clinical trial. Known as RGH-188, the drug targets D3 receptors instead of D2 receptors, as do most...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 16, 2007 11:29 AM
Over the years I've met several bipolars who claim they were cured through diet and vitamins. They are always very passionate when talking about their cure and, as dubious as I tend to be of any claims of a "cure,"...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 15, 2007 10:55 AM
This bit from a Wall Street Journal article yesterday says it all: "Chinese drug companies are the main suppliers of the raw ingredients needed to make AstraZeneca's Seroquel, an blockbuster that is used to treat schizophrenia and other mental disorders,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 10, 2007 12:01 AM
Well, perhaps not everywhere, but this evening I saw it on live TV--as opposed to on BMS' website--and I just sat there and shook my head as I watched history being made. You see, this ad is the first time...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 5, 2007 11:22 PM
Last week's $515 million settlement reached by BMS with the Department of Justice was reportedly as a result of internal whistleblowers at the company, according to this press release from the National Whistleblowers Center. The settlement closed a case brought...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 2, 2007 12:01 AM
Yet another teen popped for possessing Seroquel--and marijuana, too--apparently intending to get high and/or low by chopping up the pills and snorting them. This happened in Omaha, Neb. It's not clear if the teen acquired the drug illegally or if...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 1, 2007 04:34 PM
I just finished watching the "60 Minutes" piece on child bipolar disorder. It seemed to me to be about as level and as fair a handling of the controversial diagnosis as you could get out of television news. I still...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 1, 2007 12:01 AM
Late yesterday, the Department of Justice announced a settlement with BMS of allegations involving a range of drugs the company makes and markets, including Abilify. The company is paying $515 million. The allegations involving Abilify were these: "Second, the Government...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 29, 2007 12:36 PM
Late last week, Arkansas' Attorney General, Dustin McDaniel, informed legislators that his office is on the verge of suing the makers of Zyprexa, Seroquel, and Risperdal over off-label marketing schemes involving the use of their drugs in the state's Medicaid...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 24, 2007 12:05 AM
According to Decision Resources, a market tracking firm, Risperdal and Seroquel have overtaken Zyprexa as the go-to antipsychotics in treating schizophrenia. I mostly pass along this news on a for-what-it's-worth-to-ya basis. I also found this quote from the press release...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 18, 2007 12:03 AM
Sally Satel, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and conservative policy wonk on mental health issues, had an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times. It's hard to tell what drove the paper to run an op-ed on the DSM right now. All...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 14, 2007 12:05 AM
Most of you already know that the CDC released data yesterday showing a rise in the teen suicide rate in the US in 2004. Of particular concern was an increase in suicides among girls aged 10 to 14 years old....
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 7, 2007 01:42 AM
David Miklowitz, a psychologist at the University of Colorado, has begun a study to determine if family-focused therapy, of which his is the father, can work to prevent bipolar disorder from developing in kids. While the evidence is mixed that...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 5, 2007 12:03 AM
Since it's a slow week, I thought I'd let readers know about what search terms drive non-regulars to this site. I am fascinated by peoples' searches because it tells me a lot about what's going on in the mental health...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 27, 2007 03:08 PM
An interesting piece on online support groups for all manner of health conditions from the Orlando Sentinel. John Grohol from PsychCentral is quoted and offers a bit more on what is now such a phenomenon of the Net that the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 15, 2007 07:12 AM
Today is my 45th birthday. In some ways, the timing of my off-meds experiment was on purpose--although this is the right time of year to give it a go--and a gift to myself. The experiment continues to go better each...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 13, 2007 12:05 AM
Marissa from depression introspection posed the following to me in comments following a post of mine yesterday: "Maybe it's possible for some people that as they get older, their symptoms become few and far between. So did any of the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 17, 2007 12:05 AM
It is blazing hot in Seattle today as it will be the rest of the week plus I am up to my elbows in outside work the next couple of days, so posting will be a bit erratic. However, I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 10, 2007 10:36 AM
Vaughan at Mind Hacks has an excellent discussion of recent research pinning rates of schizophrenia and locale in South East London. Aside from all the other factors the study identifies as driving rates of psychosis, I think increased urbanization in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 6, 2007 12:56 AM
According to Lawyersandseattlements.com, AstraZeneca could be facing upwards of $10 billion in payouts over lawsuits related to Seroquel, the company's atypical antipsychotic. I'm not sure that I buy the amount--Lilly, after all, has paid out about $1.3 billion over Zyprexa,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 5, 2007 09:48 AM
Henry Nasrallah, editor of the journal Current Psychiatry, penned an editorial in the journal's current issue in response to the Cho rampage in April at Virginia Tech. ">Nasrallah is a psychiatrist at the University of Cincinnati. The Last Psychiatrist has...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 25, 2007 12:03 AM
I really don't know how else to describe this, but Lawrence Diller, a psychiatrist in Walnut Creek, California, has declared war on Joseph Biederman and the Harvard bipolar child mafia. Recently, he told an audience at a bipolar disorder conference...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 19, 2007 04:39 AM
Following up on my post of yesterday, here's a link to the Boston Globe's excellent piece on the Harvard bipolar child mafia and the controversy around the diagnosis and treatments. I'm a bit confused why one blogger deems this the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 18, 2007 12:05 AM
David Carr, a media columnist for the New York Times, former alt-weekly editor and one of the genuine good sorts in the journalism world, had an interesting piece yesterday wherein he examined his first brush with the health care blogosphere...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 12, 2007 12:07 AM
Yet another slice of the CATIE study is out in the Archives of General Psychiatry. This time investigators were out to measure cognitive improvement in schizophrenics taking either Zyprexa, Risperdal, Seroquel, Geodon or perphenazine, a first-generation anti-psychotic. Although researchers measured...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 6, 2007 12:05 AM
This has been a remarkably news-free week in the mental health world, allowing me to take a small break even. But don't be lulled into complacency. The American Psychiatric Association begins its annual convention over the weekend and that means...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 18, 2007 12:01 AM
Yesterday, a medical tracking firm reported that the use of anti-depressants and ADHD drugs by teens is down, but that the use of antipsychotics is way up. Antipsych use has doubled since 2001 to the point where 1.2 percent of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 17, 2007 12:03 AM
John McManamy accuses the New York Times of "misleading" readers about child bipolar disorder and other things in their recent story on pharma 'ho docs in Minnesota handing out atypicals to kids like candy. Funny that John, in another post,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 14, 2007 10:55 AM
First, I will be guest blogging over at To The People for the next week or so while a couple of the regular bloggers at this Libertarian site are off on vacation and, likely, violating substance control laws and the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 11, 2007 11:06 AM
As I noted on Tuesday, a new study claims that 4.5 percent of the American population has bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder in this study is understood as BP-I, BP-2 and subthreshold bipolar disorder. SBD, as I am calling it, doesn't...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 11, 2007 12:48 AM
Several bloggers picked up on today's New York Times piece on pharma 'ho docs in Minnesota dosing kids on atypicals. CL Psych has a smart, lengthy analysis of the article. Stir Crazy reports that a mom quoted in the article...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 10, 2007 11:33 AM
About six weeks ago, a reader tipped me that the New York Times was poking around on a story about Seroquel set in Minnesota. That story is out today--by Gardiner Harris, Ben Carey and Janet Roberts--and it is kick ass....
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 10, 2007 12:07 AM
In deference to my back, let me quickly point you all to this article concerning about 350 lawsuits that were filed against AZ regarding allegations around its drug Seroquel. These suits are in addition to the federal class action suit...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 9, 2007 12:53 AM
I am mostly of the living today, thankfully. As usual there is much afoot. The Washington Post reports that Cho never received outpatient treatment after his brief stay in a psych unit. Due to very unclear lines of authority and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 7, 2007 11:48 AM
Long in the consideration phase, the FDA yesterday ordered drug makers to amend current black box warnings to include language that the drugs may cause suicidal thinking in young adults up to 24 years of age, no suicidality in adults,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 3, 2007 09:49 AM
Hi. Happy May Day. Oodles of interesting stuff out there. Virginia's governor closes loophole that allowed Cho to buy guns. Psych Central raises questions about the slippery slope that lawmakers may be on with regards to people deemed to be...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 1, 2007 10:41 AM
I went out for dinner and drinks with an old friend the other night. I was broke and she was buying. We hadn't really sat down and talked in 18 months or so. In the midst of talking about whatever...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 27, 2007 12:03 AM
Eli Lilly reports sparkling financials and increased revenue from Zyprexa, although that's mostly related to increased prices. Cymbalta sales way up. Still, company profits were off 39 percent due to the Icos acquisition. Not clear if the $500 million Zyprexa...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 16, 2007 12:23 PM
The whole AZ sales manager who sent out a memo saying cancer docs' offices were like buckets of cash dust-up (the memo later leaked out) has now led, potentially at any rate, to a top exec resigning and a steaming...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 13, 2007 09:43 AM
A mental health worker's take on The New Yorker's article on bipolar children. The Last Psychiatrist's partly-sarcastic assessment of the end of the anti-depressant age for bipolar and the birth of antipsychotics for everything. We want Seroquel in the water...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 9, 2007 10:23 AM
I've run into yet another bipolar noting that he cannot sleep without Seroquel: "Now, I have become a Seroquel addict meaning, I don't sleep without taking the drug. I could go 4 -5 days and probably more without sleep and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 9, 2007 12:01 AM
A bunch of things to pass along. CL Psych has some fascinating bits on the RU-486 treatment for depression, including a researcher with some over-the-top conflicts. Psych Central has a great post on the best psychotherapies for bipolar disorder. In...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 5, 2007 11:30 AM
Wayne Fenton's teenaged killer admits to killing the psychiatrist. Now goes off to state hospital, judged not guilty by reason of insanity. Such a waste on every score. Teen in Ohio busted for possession of Seroquel. Which he was apparently...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 4, 2007 12:20 PM
Thanks to those of you who bird-dogged my recent site tweaks. If anyone notices anything missing or wants to suggest other blogs, let me know. Man on Lexapro gets worse, docs prescribe Paxil and Risperdal, three days later man jumps...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 2, 2007 11:48 AM
The other day a reader, an older bipolar, posed some questions to me: "How have you managed to find your way through it all? What do you do drug wise that you found to work well?" I'm not sure that...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 2, 2007 12:58 AM
A reader left this comment the other day and was OK with me putting it on the main page. I pass it along without comment, as it speaks for itself: "My 27 year old son was put on Seroquel without...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 2, 2007 12:03 AM
Corrupt medical school fits right into the New Jersey zeitgeist. CL Psych explores the science of early-onset bipolar disorder. And questions the fear-mongering charges out there. Parents using an electric shock device on an autistic son. Another bipolar, a hockey...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 30, 2007 11:27 AM
As I noted yesterday, a new NIMH-sponsored study of anti-depressant use in bipolar disorder (or bipolar depression, if you prefer) showed that placebo outperformed anti-depressants in treating bipolar depression in patients already taking a mood stabilizer. Twenty-seven percent of patients...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 30, 2007 12:03 AM
There's a Raymond Chandler quote I've loved since I first read it: "There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 27, 2007 12:03 AM
OK, some guy in Chicagoland has a child with his fiance while he's carrying on a year-long affair with his ex. He blames it on bipolar disorder. Please. Sounds like a case of Dumbass Disorder to me. I am so...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 23, 2007 11:16 AM
The New York Times is out today with an article concerning Eli Lilly's advisory role to doctors seeing MedicAid patients in various state programs around the country. The gist is that, in order to keep Zyprexa from being pushed out...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 23, 2007 09:42 AM
Seroquel was approved by the FDA for bipolar depression in October. Since then, I've noted that AstraZeneca is trialing the drug for a host of conditions, clinical depression and anxiety among them (and it's for kids too!). Apparently, the trials...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 23, 2007 12:03 AM
As I noted last year, some basic researchers--those would be the dorks who work with animal modules and molecules and such--have believed for some time that flawed/missing genes that regulate circadian rhythms are at the root of mania and bipolar...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 21, 2007 09:58 AM
There was an interesting and compelling--and, in many respects, flawed--article in the Los Angeles Times on March 16. It told the tale of a man named Kanuri Qawi, a schizophrenic who'd been in and out of jail and in and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 20, 2007 12:03 AM
Somehow, I missed John McManamy's blog post a couple of weeks back on early-onset bipolar disorder or juvenile bipolar disorder or whatever the hell we are going to end up calling it, aside from a failed a social experiment, when...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 19, 2007 03:17 AM
As I noted in January, ads for Abilify have popped up around Seattle. The one I saw in my part of town disappeared, but apparently the one in the University District didn't. Thanks to a reader tip and another reader...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 16, 2007 12:05 AM
Last night CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" spent a bunch of time on the new FDA warnings on sleeping pills, going into the medical issues and the experiences of one man who got busted for a DUI while on Ambien. They...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 15, 2007 12:01 PM
I am glad to see that my colleague CL Psych is slapping around the silly diagnostic criteria of early-onset bipolar disorder, especially its vague cousin bipolar disorder NOS: "Of course, the upshot to a bipolar diagnosis is that it requires...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 15, 2007 12:01 AM
Author Robert L. Shook, best-selling author of such classics as Hardball Selling, has a new book out on various "miracle" drugs and the glorious triumph of Big Pharma to develop them and bring them to market. (Press release here.) The...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 13, 2007 10:37 AM
And not the good kind, but three subpoenas from US Attorneys in Boston, San Francisco and Philadelphia. The subpoenas are related to ongoing investigations of sales and marketing of Risperdal. Which is to say off-label marketing. Although Zyprexa and Eli...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 12, 2007 10:47 AM
That's according to this Bloomberg Wire Service article. "Almost half of Seroquel sales in 2006 were for disorders for which AstraZeneca has yet to gain regulatory approval, according to Datamonitor Plc, a London-based market research firm. The other half was...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 9, 2007 10:34 AM
A neighbor of mine, whom I'll call B., is about to be evicted from his apartment here in Seattle. He's 61 years old and has had schizophrenia since he was in his early-20s. But I'll come back to that problem...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 8, 2007 12:01 AM
Defense attorneys for the parents of Rebecca Riley argued in court yesterday that there was no way the parents had enough medication on hand to have overdosed their daughter, aged 4, who died in December in Hull, Mass. She was...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 6, 2007 11:35 AM
As I noted yesterday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) last week requested that Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca provide the House's Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Waxman chairs, with a slew of documents relating to the companies' research, testing and marketing...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 6, 2007 12:32 AM
Today, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) subpoened documents from both Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca concerning allegations about how the makers of Zyprexa and Seroquel have marketed their drugs, among other allegations. More in the morning after I have had a chance...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 5, 2007 05:23 PM
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sued the makers of Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel on February 26, it was reported last week: "Lilly, based in Indianapolis, hid the risks and exaggerated the benefits of its antipsychotic medication Zyprexa while persuading doctors to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 5, 2007 12:01 AM
Some of you remember the landmark CATIE study which has established, to date, that atypical antipsychotics are little better than older antipsychotics at treating schizophrenia--an epic hype-busting finding that was--and offer no cost-benefit boost versus the older drugs. In the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 1, 2007 12:01 AM
As usual, there's been a ton of good stuff in my little universe of reading this past week, which I haven't gotten around to linking to. I hereby rectify this situation: The Last Psychiatrist tackles the question of how many...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 24, 2007 12:10 PM
I love Google alerts. Yesterday, it pointed me to the blog of someone who is having some interesting dreams kicked off by Seroquel: "It is very interesting and kind of spooky because I have very weird & unusual dreams. Sometimes...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 23, 2007 12:01 AM
During my flurry of work on Zyprexa this week, I have neglected to point readers to the excellent work CL Psych has done the last few days on Zyprexa and Eli Lilly's possible off-label marketing of the drug for use...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 22, 2007 12:01 AM
That's right. I have created a new DSM disorder. It is to be used in cases such as this: "Decision Resources, Inc., one of the world's leading research and advisory firms focusing on pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that AstraZeneca's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 20, 2007 11:39 AM
It probably comes as no comfort to Eli Lilly that yesterday Slate.com wrote up one of the Zyprexa documents, apparently downloaded from this here website. Go read their nice piece here. Many thanks to Slate. This makes me wonder where...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 16, 2007 12:01 AM
The New York Times has an article on the death, murder, unintentional over-dosing or whatever it turns out to be of four-year-old Rebecca Riley. Reporter Ben Carey smartly uses it as a wedge to talk about the debate within psychiatry...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 15, 2007 12:05 AM
I should've done this on Friday, but I was all wrapped-up in The Zyprexa Chronicles and blew off posting something about all the other fine work floating around the mental health blogging world. Until now. CL Psych, as usual, had...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 12, 2007 12:01 AM
On July 7, 2003, Alan Breier, the Zyprexa Product Team and other Eli Lilly officials issued a "Diabetes Update" memo to the company's policy committee, according to Lilly documents I have reviewed. Breier, a psychiatrist by training, was named Lilly's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 9, 2007 01:00 PM
There's more news out of Boston on the bipolar child murdered sadness I wrote about the other day. Rebecca Riley was her name. She was four-years-old and was found dead last December. Her parents stand charged with her murder, allegedly...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 8, 2007 12:03 AM
In Illinois, the family of a deceased elderly man has sued several nursing homes for giving the man Seroquel, which a lawsuit asserts contributed to his death. In other news, I should really say at least one nice thing about...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 8, 2007 12:01 AM
What the hell do you say about a thing like this? A four-year-old girl, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was found dead in her parents home in December near Boston, according to a press account. Now, her parents stand charged with...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 6, 2007 12:03 AM
I noted recently that the Abilify ads that have been cropping up on phone booths and such in Seattle and elsewhere in the country took DTC advertising to new lows. Here's a picture of one of the ads in Philadelphia,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 5, 2007 12:49 AM
On Friday, I opened my big yap about NAMI--and by that I meant NAMI National, not your local, mostly-volunteer NAMI. And, um, were there ever a ton of responses. By the end, it had become one of the best comment...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 5, 2007 12:13 AM
CL Psych has caught AstraZeneca authoring yet another paid editorial which has been placed in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. When will these allegedly independent academic journals catch a fucking clue? If they continue to run such naked ad campaigns...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 2, 2007 11:55 AM
As I have noted here many times, there is much controversy around the existence of and definitions for bipolar disorder in children, AKA juvenile bipolar disorder, early-onset bipolar disorder and child bipolar disorder. I've been very harsh on what I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 1, 2007 12:11 AM
CL Psych has really been tearing up all the news on Paxil (Seroxat) and adding his own original analysis. Go read it here. Now for some highlights of his take on the BBC show on Paxil and the involvement of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 31, 2007 12:03 AM
A reader left this comment earlier: "I used Seroquel at 200 mg for over two years. It took me 4 months to quit because of insomnia. I ended up reducing the dose 25mg every two or three weeks before i...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 30, 2007 04:48 PM
I've joked before that AstraZeneca is trialing Seroquel for every malady under the sun. Now, CL Psych has a post about AZ testing it for use in anorexics with hyperglycemia. Bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, children, autism, ODD, ADD, addiction, public...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 30, 2007 12:06 PM
I've seen my share of stupid--OK, misapplied--studies in the psych world over the years. This one is a new contender for stupidest and you just knew it had to involve Seroquel. AstraZeneca is on a mission, after all, to get...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 29, 2007 12:03 AM
I noted recently, a federal government study found, after reviewing the scientific literature, that there was not enough evidence to support the off-label--ie, unapproved use--use of atypical antipsychotics. At the time, I mentioned that another government study had determined that...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 29, 2007 12:01 AM
There was an interesting story last week in Psychiatric Times. It was a curtain raiser on what the reporter promises will be a big year of data for psych MDs. Lots of studies on using atypicals in kids and adolescents--I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 24, 2007 12:01 AM
Here we have yet another round of bad news for the atypical antipsychotics. In this case, the federal government's Agency for Research Healthcare and Quality is out with a study claiming that there is not enough evidence to support off-label...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 18, 2007 02:17 AM
I've noted on this site in the past how the media regularly screws up reporting on mental health issues--everything from the prevalence of bipolar disorder to what meds fall into which class of treatments. Here are two examples. In the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 10, 2007 11:20 AM
I spent some of this past weekend talking with a 20-something bipolar friend of mine. She's not doing so swell, after a couple of years or so of treatment and currently being on six different medications. Part of the reason...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 8, 2007 12:05 AM
Yesterday, I noted that a recent letter to AJP had reported on prisoners snorting Seroquel and asking whether they weren't becoming addicted to the drug. In the same issue, another letter reports on a prisoner who created a "Q Ball"...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 5, 2007 12:01 AM
There is a remarkable letter to the editor in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry about Seroquel abuse in an Ohio prison, especially involving the snorting of crushed up tablets. In the joint, the atypical antipsychotic has earned the street...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 4, 2007 12:01 AM
I was working on "the Other Project" last night, and so I have nothing smart to say today--not that I ever do. Until I recapture my mind, feast on this post by CL Psych commenting on Michael Thase's reply to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 3, 2007 12:01 AM
Last month I wrote about some confusion around how treatment benefits--effects sizes--were determined in a recent study of Seroquel in bipolar depression. The study is known as BOLDER II, and was partly the basis for the FDA's approval of the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 2, 2007 12:01 AM
Just because it's obligatory and vaguely amusing, here are some of the posts that generated the most hits on my blog this year. Thanks to all of you for reading and for your support. Happy New Year. Love American Style:...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 31, 2006 03:34 PM
First, thanks to whomever at reddit.com for linking to my ramblings about narcissism, the Web 2.0 and Google yesterday. Many hits as a result. I am more flattered that Nic Carr linked to the post from Rough Type. I also...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 28, 2006 10:19 AM
There's a lot of news in this post. Happy reading. An anonymous tipster pointed me to something called "zyprexakills." Apparently, it is a response by the netroots to the court order forcing Jim Gottstein, a lawyer in Alaska, to return...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 26, 2006 12:05 AM
Well, well, well. An internist in New York steps up to the plate and writes openly about how an Eli Lilly sales rep tried to coax him into prescribing Zyprexa: "Sitting across from my desk on the small blue couch,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 26, 2006 12:03 AM
I was poking around Google Scholar and PubMed as is my wont, and ran into something interesting. Mauricio Tohen, an MD and DPh, is listed as author on numerous research papers investigating Zyprexa. Tohen is a major thought leader in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 19, 2006 10:40 AM
I was busy with "the Other Project" all day yesterday, so I have little in the way of original material to post for the moment. For now, feast on this post and the one below. Over the 15 months this...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 13, 2006 12:03 AM
In what strikes me as an important post, CL Psych, is calling into question how a recent study on Seroquel's use in bipolar disorder arrived at the degree of positive effects experienced by the research subjects. Or more properly how...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 6, 2006 12:01 AM
I had planned on doing some other posts for today, but since a few readers have asked for it as in right now, here is my own personal self-help, self-awareness, stay-out-of-the-psych-unit, any-fucking-port-in-a-storm guide. I want to caution that this is...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 5, 2006 12:01 AM
As I mentioned on Friday, the latest results of the landmark, NIH-funded CATIE study, which measures the performance over 18 months of second-generation antipsychotics versus one first-generation antipsychotic in treating schziophrenia, came out in the American Journal of Psychiatry. This...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 4, 2006 12:01 AM
Nothing from me today. I worked too much yesterday and there is a major new study out on first v. second-generation antipsychotics that I need to pour through before posting much on it. Here's an account of the study from...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 1, 2006 10:13 AM
Because I am in a moody space right now (now being about 10 p.m PST), albeit a good creative space, I am going to pass along a few recent reader comments that articulate better than I can what's going on...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 29, 2006 12:03 AM
As I mentioned on Friday, the British press was alive with news of a study in the Archives of General Psychiatry in which British researchers claim that there is fundamentally no difference in patient outcomes between patients with schizophrenia who...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 27, 2006 12:38 AM
In recent posts, I have noted that AstraZeneca is pushing hard to turn Seroquel into the equivalent of Lithium--the go-to, gold standard, front line monotherapy treatment for bipolar disorder. Some readers have wondered whether I wasn't jumping to conclusions and,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 20, 2006 01:03 AM
In treating bipolar disorder, my fellow BP blogger/journalist Liz Spikol, has some thoughts on my recent post about Seroquel being pushed on docs as the Bipolar Pill, aka monotherapy. She essentially agrees with me that this is troubling stuff and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 16, 2006 12:03 AM
So I ran into this Psych MD I know today and we got to talking about Seroquel and its recent approval as a monotherapy for bipolar disorder. This particular doc works at both one of the large clinics dealing with...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 14, 2006 12:03 AM
A frequent commenter here left a comment yesterday that pisses me off and not at her: "For once I will keep this short. My doctor DID tell me Seroquel was equal to Lithium." Fucking-a, could we get some sense of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 10, 2006 12:01 AM
Hi. Looks like I am actually back now, after a few days of trying to disconnect from all the work drama. Which means I have some catching up to do. One of those things is to introduce you all to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 9, 2006 01:15 PM
Sorry for obsessing so much about Seroquel lately, but its maker, AstraZeneca, keeps making news. This time out, it's an article about how Seroquel has dramatically boosted the company's sales—the article is mute on how much exactly—due to its increased...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 26, 2006 08:34 AM
I looked up AstraZeneca's press release touting the recent FDA approval of Seroquel for bipolar depression (it's already approved for use in acute mania). The company states the following in the press release: "Patients with bipolar disorder are symptomatic almost...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 25, 2006 12:03 AM
I traded comments and some email with Liz Spikol yesterday. I was a bit imprecise in my thoughts on Seroquel over the last couple of days—OK, I had neglected to add a bit of context—so let me address this. My...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 25, 2006 12:01 AM
Liz Spikol, bipolar blogger, passes along these thoughts on my post on Seroquel yesterday: "I know what you're saying, but Seroquel has been working for my bipolar disorder for eight years now with minimal side effects. It would be stupid...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 24, 2006 12:03 AM
On Friday, the FDA approved AstraZeneca's application to have Seroquel approved for treating bipolar depression. The drug is already approved for acute treatment of mania. This will now allow the company to go marching around and tell docs that this...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 23, 2006 08:10 AM
Wow. Let me just quote from the lede to the New York Times article on this: "The drugs most commonly used to soothe agitation and aggression in people with Alzheimer’s disease are no more effective than placebos for most patients,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 12, 2006 12:01 AM
And are often better writers as well. Last week, one of you posted a comment in response to me biting on the anti-psychiatry crowd (I respect their viewpoint but they are too often responding to the dimensions of the mental...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 27, 2006 12:01 AM
OK, so I just had to say that, spurred by a Times article yesterday on the resurgence of Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, a semi-talented weirdo indie rocker type who has always driven me straight up the wall. Maybe now...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 21, 2006 12:03 AM
Last week, there was a slew of media coverage of a study asserting that bipolars lose 65.5 days of work a year (a combination of missed days and allegedly "lost" productivity), twice that of people with depression. The cause, according...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 11, 2006 12:01 AM
Or more properly for giving Seroquel to a friend, whose speech became slurred and whose parents called the police, who then busted the friend. The charge? Corrupting another with drugs. This happened in West Virginia. Some shit I simply cannot...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 5, 2006 12:34 AM
As I mentioned the other day, I had to knock down my recent, short-lived bout of depression with 50 mgs. of Seroquel. It wasn’t pretty and I was so fogged that I couldn’t work the next day, much less stay...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 5, 2006 12:07 AM
I almost never post on Sunday, but there's been enough feedback to the recent posts on Abilify to lead me to ask you all to post to comments/email me about personal experiences (good, bad and mixed) with Abilify. And I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 4, 2006 01:36 AM
Right? Right now, it has nailed me to the ground. Had to come home early yesterday and take Seroquel--ick--in an attempt to fog it out of my brain. I slept 15 hours. My back hurts and I had all the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 2, 2006 10:01 AM
Every so often, I run into an ">article that makes me think a bit differently about what's going on with mental health in our culture. It also helps my mood if the article confirms most of what I've been saying...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 25, 2006 01:00 AM
The Treatment Advocacy Center’s executive director Mary T. Zdanowicz had an op-ed on Sunday in the Washington Post. It’s not a bad piece, but of course I have some nits to pick in a moment. And yeah this is going...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 23, 2006 12:01 AM
AstraZeneca has recently touted Seroquel as an anti-suicide drug, aprt of the company's multi-pronged attempt to turn the atypical antipsychotic into the new mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder. Now, here's a story from Yonkers, NY which indicates that a jail...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 2, 2006 09:02 AM
It was a gut hunch. Except that it's never that simple. So here's how the more complicated part went. It involves the word monotherapy. I have been on Lamictal alone since last August, when I walked away from atypicals as...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 27, 2006 12:01 AM
So help me figure something out. As I posted a way back, my psychiatrist has used the term “recovered” to describe my current state. I am dubious of such terms, as they imply the completion of a journey and I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 18, 2006 12:10 AM
Ah, my good pal Maverick is back at it again. Scientology better than Prozac. Better in which sense, Tom? British psychiatrist bashes Tom Terrific. Yee-haw. Tom to Katie's placenta: Hello, dinner. I have a hunch Katie will break the silent...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 18, 2006 12:01 AM
On occasion, the mainstream media is willing to step away from its aiding and abetting of the pill-pushing paradigm. Here's an example from Britain's The Independent. Like everything in the British media, it's deeply slanted. But whatever. Basic argument: patients...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 17, 2006 12:02 AM
A reader offers the following in response to the earlier sad story of an Irish schizophrenic dying young and under mysterious circumstances: "Misadventure . . .right!!!! There is seriously more to this story. I would like to know his family...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 14, 2006 07:12 AM
In this case a 4-year-old was diagnosed. Except in extreme cases, I am not buying that--and I sure as hell am not buying kindergartners on Zyprexa and Seroquel. And the mom in the article says this gives her her kid...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 13, 2006 12:08 AM
For the last few years, I have felt a whole lot like Diogenes, minus the lamp, wandering around looking for an honest psych researcher who will admit openly just how dicey the evidence is supporting the use of psych meds....
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 12, 2006 12:06 AM
In the past, I have rapped NAMI's knuckles for taking contributions from pharma companies. It's a big compromise when advocacy groups of any kind take money from private industry and then go out and beat the drum to help create...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 11, 2006 12:02 AM
Over the past year, there's been some skepticism popping-up in psych circles about the increased rates of diagnoses of mental illnesses as well as about the performance of psych meds. Most of that skepticism seems to be coming from the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 6, 2006 10:02 AM
It's no secret that bipolar disorder is often misdiagnosed as unipolar depression. That puts patients in the bind of being half-treated and, as we well know, the consequences can be disastrous. Here's an article on the phenomenon alleging that 35...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 6, 2006 08:57 AM
A friend of mine was recently at a new psychiatrist's office, being put through an extensive intake process by a therapist. This was a prelude to seeing the real M.D. a week or so later. My friend, a bipolar, asked...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 27, 2006 12:01 AM
One of the biggest problems with mental health care is that many patients don't stick with treatment. They fly off their meds altogether or take them intermittently. Neither approach is good. As much as I bitch about meds like Seroquel,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 24, 2006 08:45 AM
I continue to be amazed at the lack of effectiveness of some psych meds in achieving their main goals, one of which is suicide prevention. Here's a new bit of evidence (abstract-only) from a major NIMH-funded study of bipolar disorder....
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 5, 2006 04:08 AM
So AstraZeneca, Seroquel's maker, filed papers with the FDA today (er the 30th) to have Seroquel licensed and approved for use in what's called bipolar depression. That's a subtype of the disorder and would be yet another big market for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 31, 2005 09:22 AM
Every so often I grind my teeth over the non-coverage of mental health issues in the mainstream media. Case in point: the New York Times. This year, the paper has had a decent series in its pages called "Being a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 25, 2005 01:17 AM
As I've written elsewhere, marijuana has long been thought to have anti-depressant properties. Lester Grinspoon, an emeritus psych prof at Harvard, has been saying this since the 1950s. Many in the psych profession have written him off as a quack,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 14, 2005 12:23 AM
Psych researchers--very infleuntial ones, I might add--whom I have interviewed in recent weeks are openly touting atypicals as the new mood stabilizers. That would mean replacing Depakote or Lamictal or Lithium with an atypical as a first-line approach to dealing...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 13, 2005 08:49 AM
Here's my thinking on atypicals, for what it's worth. They are damn effective for use in treating short-term mania and depression that's spinning towards psychosis. Take them for a day or two and you can knock that bad shit down....
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 3, 2005 07:34 AM
Here's what I think about the product of the year around 10.30 pm. Things were spiraling badly today--depression and all the black thoughts that come with it of course. So I did what work I could, went home and popped...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 1, 2005 10:38 PM
Wow, I was wrong all along. Seroquel is a spectacular drug and was just named product of the year--break out the champagne and balloons!--by the National Business & Disability Council. Maybe, these business blow job groups ought to check in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 1, 2005 11:13 AM
Last weekend, I referred to a few studies that have popped-up on the use of Seroquel in bipolars. It was a study sponsored by the makers of Seroquel, AstraZeneca. AZ is one of the largest pharma companies in the world....
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 29, 2005 02:49 PM
A couple of years ago, I hit the wall with psych meds when I had a very bad reaction--racing heart, massive kidney output--to Lexapro and Risperdal. After that, I fired my doc, got a new one, and have worked to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 25, 2005 09:58 PM
A reader commented, inquiring about others' experiences with Seroquel. I'm glad that Seroquel has helped her with her episodes. (Her comment is linked at the bottom of that post.) I, too, am interested in hearing from as many of you...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 24, 2005 09:05 PM
As mentioned earlier, a bunch of studies came out of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Congress last week. The conference was held in Amsterdam. The nice folks at AstraZeneca, makers of Seroquel, were repping results of studies showing how...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 23, 2005 11:38 PM
A spate of studies on bipolar disorder have been released in the last few days. I'll discuss them in more detail later today. But, first, some background. There is a large psych conference going on in Europe, thus the releases....
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 23, 2005 03:49 AM
Here's a study that looks into reports of priapism--permanent erection is the best way I can put it--associated with Seroquel. If Seroquel can do this to men, what can it do to women? As usual with research journals, only the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 20, 2005 09:24 AM
Sleep is one of the biggest problems facing people with mental illness. It is a simple, necessary human function, but for many of us it remains complicated and elusive. For depressives, or bipolars who lean that way, there is too...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 17, 2005 02:48 AM
Someone asked me if my earlier posts about Seroquel meant that I liked some of the other atypicals. The answer is no. I've taken Risperdal for extended periods of time and Geodon for a few weeks. Geodon made me agitated...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 13, 2005 09:22 PM
I recently posted about a "survey" released by the World Federation for Mental Health. The survey reached the conclusion that bipolars want better treatment because that would help them live better. No kidding. As I mentioned before, AstraZeneca (makers of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 12, 2005 11:01 PM
So today--that'd be Oct. 10--is World Mental Health Day, proclaimed as such by the World Federation for Mental Health. Like every other advocacy group under the sun, they are banging the drum for education and awareness and all that necessary...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 10, 2005 11:07 PM
I don't quite know how to put this: I am sick of researchers doing "studies" on mental illness that declare meds efficacious and darnn good for you based upon short-term studies. These studies also typically ignore the cognitive and physical...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 9, 2005 03:50 PM
This is something I posted on a myspace group a few weeks ago. If it says anything, it's that grappling with this nonsense over the long-term is throughly doable...and worth it: 16 years ago last month, i was formally diagnosed...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 3, 2005 01:27 AM
In recent post, I referred to the landmark CATIE study. I do not use the term landm ark lightly: This is the first study I know of that has tracked schizophrenics over a long time period (18 months vs. hte...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 2, 2005 11:37 PM
We all bitch about meds because meds have got their problems. The side effects suck and many of us wonder how effective the meds actually are. Don't read that as an anti-meds argument. It is just an honest assessment of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 30, 2005 02:08 AM