Resources for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Consumers should know how to report drug side effects to FDA

www.pressofatlanticcity.com

We've all seen pharmaceutical side effects printed on drug labels and heard them quickly mentioned on television commercials for those drugs. Sometimes the possible side effects are mind boggling because they sound far worse than the symptoms the drug is treating.

Restless leg syndrome, for example, is no doubt annoying and disruptive to sleep. But the drugs for treating it can cause uncontrollable sexual or gambling urges, according to at least one study.

Few of us ever think about how those side effects are compiled.

They come from drug companies as the result of studies, and from doctors and patients who report actual experiences to a program mandated by Congress and run by the FDA. Called MedWatch, it is little-known. Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Con-
sumer Reports magazine, wants to change that.

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