U.S. FDA strengthens warning over opioid/sedative combination (Reuters)

Wednesday Aug 31st, 2016

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday strengthened warnings about the danger of combining opioid painkillers or cough medicines containing opioids with benzodiazepines, a common class of sedatives.

The agency is requiring that black box warnings, the strongest available, be added to nearly 400 products, alerting doctors and patients that combining opioids and benzodiazepines can cause extreme sleepiness, slowed breathing, coma and death.

The agency said the move is part of a broad action plan to reduce the number of deaths from opioid painkiller abuse.

"It is nothing short of a public health crisis when you see a substantial increase of avoidable overdose and death related to two widely used drug classes being taken together," said FDA Commissioner Robert Califf.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-painkillers-regulations-idUSKCN1162JF

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