The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was recently urged by medical specialists to properly label combination of medications to warn the public of their effects to a person's health. A petition online is now being pushed by practitioners, researchers and even academics to put black box warnings for opioid analgesic and benzodiazepine medicines.
The petitioners specifically asked the FDA to warn the public about taking both drugs, according to Forbes.. "We believe that this black box warning is a critical first step in raising awareness around the danger of co-prescribing these medications," Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen said.
Wen claimed that they are putting their hope that the FDA will act promptly on this matter. "We expect the agency will take this petition from front-line public health leaders very seriously, and have already had initial productive conversations with them," she added.
The petition was given to the agency on Monday by 41 officials from different health departments and state universities, The Washington Post said. They asked the FDA to maintain their transparency and provide proper warnings to the people.
It was also highlighted that these types of medications can be really dangerous and risky when consumed together for a prolonged period of time. There are cases when this happens especially when doctors give opioids for pain then benzos for muscle contractions.
"This is a national public health emergency," Wen said in a Modern Healthcare report. "Those of us who are frontline providers, we see the toll that overdose has in our jurisdictions."
Asked about how the warning for each medication should be written, Wen said it should be written this way: "WARNING: CONCURRENT USE WITH BENZODIAZEPINES/OPIODS REDUCES THE MARGIN OF SAFETY FOR RESPIRATORY DEPRESSION AND CONTRIBUTES TO THE RISK OF FATAL OVERDOSE, PARTICULARLY IN THE SETTING OF MISUSE."
With this simple warning, doctors claim that deaths from these dangerous medications combination will be lessened and avoided. From 1996 to 2010, the American Journal of Public Health claimed that overdoses from these medications climbed to about 400 percent.
