Clozapine
[back] Atypical
antipsychotic
Is The Schizophrenia Mortality Study In The Lancet CREDIBLE?
A study purporting to analyze mortality rates of 66, 881 schizophrenia patients
in Finland (1973 to 2005) was published in the prestigious journal, The Lancet.
A critical analysis by psychiatrist, Grace Jackson, MD, identifies fatal flaws
in the study design and numerous methodological artefacts that introduced bias
which minimized the detection of drug-related mortality. The authors’
conclusions favoring the long-term use of second-generation antipsychotics, and
Clozaril in particular, as Dr. Jackson demonstrates, are not supported by their
study design: indeed, their "favorable" conclusions about patients' mortality
were based upon numerous confounders (methodological tricks and problems) which
mitigated the detection of actual drug-associated mortality.
Vera Hassner Sharav, AHRP/The Lancet
[2009 March] Hundreds of deaths linked to schizophrenia drug clozapine Fifty people die each year and hundreds more suffer serious side-effects as the result of taking powerful tranquillisers prescribed by the NHS....Data from the medicine watchdog’s own reporting scheme suggests that clozapine, a drug taken by schizophrenia patients, has been linked to 950 deaths since being licensed in 1990 — equivalent to nearly one fatality a week.