Sick from slimming pills

From News, Singapore snippets

Today • Thursday • June 26, 2008

 

Tan Hui Leng

huileng@mediacorp.com.sg

 

TWO young people — a man and a woman in their 20s — suffered hallucinations, anxiety and other adverse reactions after taking a slimming product called Relacore, which they had bought over the Internet.

 

Warning of the dangers of buying drugs and health products over the Internet, the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) urged consumers who had bought the product to stop taking it and throw it away. They should consult their doctors immediately if they felt unwell.

 

Relacore, an herbal supplement marketed by a company in the United States, is not sold in Singapore.

 

What the two patients took contained the Western drug ingredient sibutramine, which is used as an appetite suppressant in obesity management. Sibutramine is available here under the trade name Reductil.

 

The HSA said that Reductil should only be used under prescription and proper medical supervision. Patients with heart problems, in particular, should not take the product.

 

The HSA wants to establish if the two patients had bought a counterfeit version of Relacore.

 

The recommended daily maximum therapeutic dose is 15mg of sibutramine, but the product the two patients had taken stipulated two capsules a day — each containing 12mg of sibutramine.

 

The two patients, who were reported to the HSA in middle of this month, suffered “symptoms of psychosis such as hearing of voices, hallucinations, confusion, and thyrotoxic symptoms such as anxiety and increased heart rate”, the HSA said.

 

This case of adverse reaction to a slimming product is the second to occur in the last six years. In 2002, Slim 10 pills containing a banned appetite suppressant hit the headlines when it caused the death of a Singaporean woman and severe injury to the liver of another.

 

“This latest case shows that pills sold over the Internet are often from a variety of sources and many are dubious,“ said HAS assistant director of pharmacovigilance Chan Cheng Leng.

 

It is illegal to import Western medication into Singapore without the necessary licences or approval from the HSA.

 

Under the Medicines Act, the penalty for importing medicines illegally is a fine of up to $5,000 and/or imprisonment of up to two years.

 

Still, the HSA said: “Appropriate discretion is applied in the enforcement of the law and there are avenues to allow for the importation of small quantities of medicines for one’s personal use.”