ADHD drug Adderral pulled in Canada

The popular drug, which has been linked to 20 sudden deaths worldwide, mostly in children, was taken off the Canadian market Wednesday, sparking questions about whether kids in the USA should be using it.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a public health advisory on its Web site saying that the rate of sudden death for children on Adderall XR is no higher than for those not on the drug. But children with heart defects could be at higher risk.

Parents are making decisions about stimulants such as Adderall XR with few facts, says Julie Magno Zito, an epidemiologist at the University of Maryland. There are no good long-term studies of such medicines, she says. Rare side effects of a drug won't surface in short studies unless they include a huge number of kids, such as in a national HMO, and that kind of study hasn't been done on Adderall XR, Zito says.

About 700,000 children in the USA take Adderall XR, a timed-release stimulant, and 300,000 use Adderall, a version that often needs to be taken more than once a day, according to Shire Pharmaceuticals Group PLC, maker of the drug.

Steve - Strattera, another drug used for attention deficit, has recently been linked to liver problems (Blog - 2/3/05)