FDA orders stronger warnings about risk of using opioid painkillers with certain anti-anxiety drugs (LA Times)

Thursday Sep 1st, 2016

The  Food and Drug Administration is issuing strong new warnings that the combined use of opioid medications and benzodiazepines, a class of anti-anxiety medications better known by such commercial names as Xanax and Ativan, can dangerously suppress breathing and cause coma or death.

The drug safety agency is recommending that physicians take extra care in prescribing medication regimens that mix the two classes of drugs. And it is alerting people who use — or abuse — such drugs to the “serious risks” of taking them together.

The new FDA order calls for some 400 products to carry one of several “black box warnings.” Those aim to alert physicians and patients to the dangers of mixing opioids with benzodiazepines and other drugs — including insomnia medications, muscle relaxants, antipsychotic drugs and alcohol — that depress the central nervous system.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-opioid-benzodiazepin...

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