FDA warns on safety of opioid pain or cough meds combined with benzodiazepines

Amidst concerns about death and overdose risks from narcotic painkillers taken with certain antianxiety or sedative drugs, the US Food and Drug Administration has issued a strong “Boxed Warning” of combination usage.

An FDA review has found that the growing combined use of opioid medicines with benzodiazepines or other drugs that depress the central nervous system (CNS) has resulted in serious side effects, including slowed or difficult breathing and deaths.

Opioids are used to treat pain and cough; benzodiazepines are used to treat anxiety, insomnia and seizures. In an effort to decrease the use of opioids and benzodiazepines, or opioids and other CNS depressants, together, FDA is adding Boxed Warnings, our strongest warnings, to the drug labeling of prescription opioid pain and prescription opioid cough medicines, and benzodiazepines.