Data shows the prescription drug available on the NHS has been linked to 7,000 deaths since it was approved.
Clozapine — dubbed Britain’s “most dangerous” prescription drug — has been licensed to treat schizophrenia since 1990.
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Clozapine has been linked to 7,000 deaths since it was licensed to treat schizophrenia in 1990 Credit: Getty
An analysis by The Times found that the drug was linked to almost eight times more reported deaths than any other high-risk drug.
It is prescribed to around 37,000 Britons a year but can cause toxicity, with symptoms including weight gain, heart problems and respiratory disease.
William Northcott died aged 39 of a heart attack at a mental health home in Torbay, Devon, after years of medication.
His sister Kate Northcott Spall, 51, from Chester, told the newspaper: “William spent two years with arrows all over him referring to the symptoms of clozapine poisoning but nothing was done.
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“He was in hospital, he had a community mental health team, he was in an institution with nurses. I really believed they cared about him.”
The family is still awaiting an investigation, but the provisional death certificate states that William’s cause of death was “fatal arrhythmia most likely due to prescription drug toxicity.”
Around 685,000 Britons live with schizophrenia — a mental health condition that can cause a range of psychological symptoms.
These include hallucinations, delusions, confused thoughts and speech, loss of interest in everyday activities, a desire to avoid people, and feeling disconnected from emotions.
Clozapine was first used in the 1970s, but was withdrawn worldwide after scientists discovered it could drastically impair the immune system.
Trials over the next decade showed it to be effective in schizophrenic patients unresponsive to other antipsychotics, and it was gradually reintroduced with strict restrictions.
It has been available to patients for whom at least two other medicines have failed in the UK since 1990.
The drug is also prescribed off-label to help patients with other conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease.
A Times analysis shows that an average of more than 400 clozapine-related deaths have been reported to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency each year for the past decade.
Any death from clozapine is an absolute tragedy
Nikki Holmes, Consultant Mental Health Pharmacist
The medicines watchdog’s yellow card reporting scheme also receives around 2,400 notifications of “suspected serious reactions” to the drug each year.
Nikki Holmes, a consultant mental health pharmacist, said “any death from clozapine is an absolute tragedy”.
A spokesman for Living with Schizophrenia said the drug had a “complex side effect profile that requires extremely diligent treatment”.
They said: “Any adverse side effects must always be weighed against the risk of not intervening.
“In this case it would be the risk of mortal danger arising from uncontrolled psychotic thinking.”
The NHS said it followed MHRA guidance on the safe use of the drug, and the MHRA said it was “one of the most closely monitored medicines on the UK market” which was kept under “close scrutiny”.
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Source: HIS Education