Popular versions of cold and cough medications such as Sudafed are ineffective for congestion relief, according to a US drug advisory panel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An FDA advisory panel voted on Tuesday against the effectiveness of phenylephrine – the key drug found in many over-the-counter cough and cold medicines – when taken orally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FDA assembled its outside advisers to take another look at phenylephrine after it found evidence that when phenylephrine is taken orally, a very small amount of the drug actually reaches the nose to relieve congestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Its panel decided no more trials were required to prove the drug’s ineffectiveness – a conclusion which could lead to pharmaceutical companies pulling their oral medications containing phenylephrine from store shelves, or manufacturers developing new formulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The patient community requires and deserves medications that treat their symptoms safely and effectively and I don’t believe that this medication does that,” said Jennifer Schwartzott, one of the FDA panelists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FDA will now need to decide whether to revoke the drug’s over-the-counter designation as “generally recognised as safe and effective”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If it does, it could lead to a major shake-up for the $2.2bn oral decongestants market, as phenylephrine is in the vast majority of its products.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Popular versions of cold and cough medications such as Sudafed are ineffective for congestion relief, according to a US drug advisory panel. An FDA advisory panel voted on Tuesday against the effectiveness of phenylephrine – the key drug found in many over-the-counter cough and cold medicines – when taken orally. The FDA assembled its outside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[1364,3046,3044,2271,3045,3047],"class_list":["post-7365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-cold","tag-congestion-relief","tag-cough","tag-fda","tag-ingredient","tag-medicines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7367,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7365\/revisions\/7367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}