The British government Wednesday banned the popular sleeping pill Halcion and all other medicines containing the drug triazolam because of what it deemed potentially dangerous side effects.
Halcion is one of the most widely prescribed sleep medications worldwide. Since it was approved for use in the United States in 1983, more than 43 million Halcion prescriptions have been written.In murder cases in Missouri and Texas, defendants have said they were under the influence of the drug, and Halcion use was successfully adopted as a defense by a woman accused of killing her mother in Utah.
The British Department of Health said medicines containing triazolam were associated with a much higher frequency of psychiatric side effects, particularly loss of memory and depression, than other sleeping pills.
"It is now considered that the risks of treatment with triazolam outweigh the benefits," the department said.
Upjohn, the maker of Halcion based in Kalamazoo, Mich., failed to win an injunction Tuesday preventing the drug from being banned by Britain. It said it would appeal.
"There is absolutely no scientific or medical evidence that warrants withdrawal of Halcion tablets in the U.K. or any other country," Upjohn's chairman, Dr. Theodore Cooper, said.
Side effects associated with Halcion - and other sleep medications - range from drowsiness and dizziness to anxiety, insomnia and hallucinations.
In Salt Lake City, a federal judge is considering requests from people charged in slayings in Missouri and Texas to unseal confidential reports on purported side effects of Halcion.
U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Greene has said he will rule soon on requests to open the files in the suit of a former Utah woman, Ilo Grundberg, now of LasVegas, Nev., who said she killed her 83-year-old mother while using Halcion.
A murder charge against Grundberg was dismissed after court-appointed psychiatrists testified the June 1988 killing in Hurricane, Utah, resulted from her intoxication by the drug.
Grundberg and Upjohn reached a settlement in August that included keeping secret thousands of pages of documents, including reports of violent and bizarre behavior associated with Halcion.
Triazolam is available only by prescription in the United Kingdom and is used for the treating insomnia. The department said 1.5 million prescriptions for the drug were issued in Britain and Northern Ireland per year.
The Department of Health said its Committee on the Safety of Medicines recommended the ban after receiving 390 reports of adverse reactions, including 161 psychiatric reactions.
It urged triazolam users to consult their doctors before going off the drug, because of the possibility of withdrawal symptoms including insomnia and anxiety.
Last year, the Public Citizen Health Research Group asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to strengthen warnings on the side effects of Halcion.