Abilify Runs Amok, Runs Stealth Safety Campaign in Medical Journal

Furious Seasons has a rather distressing piece of news from a recent Bristol-Myers Squibb conference call. To sum it up quickly, BMS claims that 10.6% of depressed patients are now receiving atypical antipsychotics. Of those 10.6%, 21.7% are taking Abilify. So that would mean roughly 10-11 in 100 depressed patients are taking antipsychotics and 2 of them are on Abilify. I shudder to think how many are on Seroquel. Or Zyprexa. It made me think of a post I wrote a few weeks ago in which I described the marketing of Abilify for depression. A huge market of depressed people just ripe for the picking.

Going along with this, BMS is pushing back on the issue of akathisa, the side effect that has garnered the drug much bad publicity (at least in the blog world; 1, 2, 3) via a medical journal article that distracts attention from Abilify as an akathisia-inducer. More on that to come soon. Ghostwriters, ignoring contradictory evidence; basically, an attempt to completely obscure the evidence on the topic. It's not the first time BMS has successfully placed a study with major flaws into a medical journal (1, 2). Details will be forthcoming.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009