US Public Citizen seeks Darvon ban

US consumer body Public Citizen has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to immediately begin to phase out the widely-prescribed pain reliever propoxyphene (Darvon, Darvocet and generic versions) from the market because the drug has been associated with more than 2,000 accidental deaths, is physically addictive and is no more effective than safer alternatives.

It says that data from the Federal Drug Abuse Warning Network, which provides autopsy information from medical examiners in the USA, has found that 5.6% of all drug-related deaths were related to propoxyphene during the past 19 years. In 2004, 23 million prescriptions for propoxyphene were filled, making it the 12th most commonly prescribed generic drug in the the country.

Propoxyphene has been associated with 2,110 reported accidental deaths in the USA since 1981. A large proportion of these occur because most of the drug is converted into a metabolite that is highly toxic to the heart and lasts longer in the body than the original compound, resulting in cardiac depression, noted Public Citizen. Adverse cardiac events associated with propoxyphene include an interruption of heart transmission of electrical impulses, slowed heartbeats and a decreased ability of the heart to contract properly.