New figures from Pharmac have revealed New Zealanders are taking more of new generation anti-depressants, in spite of safety warnings.
The government's drug funding agency's 2005 annual review shows prescriptions for anti-depressant drugs like Prozac and Aropax are up 9.7% compared to last year, reaching an all-time high of 584,000 prescriptions.
The drugs have been subject to international scrutiny after new data linked them with an increased risk of suicide, particularly among adolescents.
Medsafe, the New Zealand drug safety authority, issued advice to prescribers in September 2004, advising them of the increased risks and advising them to monitor patients.
Pharmac Chief Executive Wayne McNee says a close examination of the data shows that prescribing for adolescents, who are the highest-risk group, continues to grow at a similar rate to adults and no significant change was noticed after the new advice from Medsafe.
"Patient numbers are small, which may indicate that prescribing amongst this age group is already done carefully," McNee says. "It's also worth noting that we have less than one year's data since the new prescribing advice was given, so it may be too early to see a definitive trend."
The annual review also shows nearly 7000 people had access to subsidised medicines in the last year.
"The 25 new spending decisions underline Pharmac's focus on investing in medicines which improve the health of New Zealanders. Our analysis shows that these decisions provided access to subsidised medicines for a further 6700 New Zealanders during the year," says McNee.
He says the total expenditure for the year of $564.6 million - $400,000 below the budgeted $565 million - is an outstanding result.
McNee says in the last year Pharmac added nine new products to the pharmaceutical schedule and 16 previously subsidised products had their access widened.
New investments included treatments for raised cholesterol (ezetimibe), respiratory disease (tiotropium), HIV/AIDS (lopinavir with ritonavir), severe pain (fentanyl patches), and diabetes (pioglitazone, blood glucose test meters).
In addition to these new investments, Pharmac widened access to treatments for patients who had heart failure (candesartan), breast cancer (letrozole), nausea from cancer treatments (hyoscine, ondansetron, tropisetron), hepatitis B and C (lamivudine, pegylated interferon), and mental illness (olanzapine and quetiapine for bipolar disease, citalopram for depression).
