Radio 4's File on 4 tonight deals with how AstraZeneca 'suppressed' Seroquel drug test data re massive weight gain and diabetes side-effects

Radio 4's File on 4 tonight (26/01/2010) deals with how AstraZeneca 'suppressed' Seroquel drug test data about its side-effects of massive weight gain and diabetes. See article on BBC News. "The marketing team sued over a drug's alleged side effects tried to suppress key data, an ex-employee has claimed. Seroquel's former UK medical adviser told the BBC he was pressured to approve promotional material which said weight gain was not an issue."

The British Medical Journal editor, Dr Fiona Godlee, sensibly urges that the medicine licensing system be reviewed. She says the pharmaceutical industry should no longer provide the evaluations of its own drugs for the licensing body to consider.

See also File on 4 itself: "A British drug company is being sued by more than 15,000 people in the United States who claim its bestselling antipsychotic drug caused severe weight gain, diabetes and other serious medical conditions. Ann Alexander investigates concerns about the way it was marketed and asks how much the public should be told about the drugs they take."

Actually there are dozens of commonly prescribed drugs that have these side-effects and these are obviously a major cause of the continuing rise in the incidence and severity of obesity and type 2 diabetes and a host of other degenerative illnesses that are co-morbidities of obesity. The drugs include cortico-steroids, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen - like some birth control medication (contraceptives), tricyclic anti-depressants, especially amitriptyline, some SSRI anti-depressants, anti-psychotics (notoriously Zyprexa,aka olanzapine), some anti-epileptics/anticonvulsants, e.g. Epilim (sodium valproate). This is by no means an exhaustive list. See my webpage about steroids and HRT et al.

So the NHS (and all other purchasers of pharmaceutical drugs the world over), as well as paying for the drugs that its doctors prescribe, incurs the astronomical costs of the vast spectrum of disabling chronic health problems they cause. - ALL of this avoidable ill-health and suffering results from the primary adverse side-effect, which is sodium retention, and all of the innocent patients who are its victims become sensitive to salt/sodium, and should have been warned strictly to avoid salt and salty food while taking the medication, because for them, salt intake causes them weight gain. I have been researching this subject intensively for well over ten years now, and I have not heard of even one doctor who gives and stresses this vital message to his/her victims/patients. Inadequate knowledge of drug side-effects is lamentably widespread in the medical profession. Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, osteomalacia, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!

See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
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Sodium in foods

Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.