Hair loss from mesalamine



Asacol, which is mesalamine - derivative of 5-aminosalicylic acid. It is prsecribed for treatment and remission maintenance at patients with ulcer colitis (earlier known as nonspecific ulcer colitis) of mild and moderate type.

Cheaper alternatives to mesalamine were made available in the late 1980s, and number of patients participating in a study the early 1990s increased accordingly. At that time, mesalamine was only available via prescription in the Netherlands, and clinical trials of the new drug had not been designed to assess whether it might be more effective than mesalamine (4, cheaper alternatives to mesalamine 6, 32). Because of the high rate discontinuation mesalamine in the Netherlands, researchers decided to conduct a retrospective analysis compare the safety and effectiveness of mesalamine with that an alternative therapy, i.e. sertraline. To this end, the investigators searched Dutch medical databases for patients treated with sertraline (SERT) in the year 2000. All cases of adverse events related to sertraline that were found then included in a subgroup analysis. The researchers found that sertraline was used more frequently for the treatment of depression than mesalamine, and it had a higher incidence rate of reported treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs, defined as symptoms that persisted after discontinuation of the study drug but that patients had not suffered in the previous 6 weeks or months with the previous treatment). latter fact might have influenced the findings because a significantly greater number of patients treated with sertraline developed severe TEAE, such as insomnia, headache and nausea compared with mesalamine (Figure ). There was a similar difference between the incidence rates of reported symptoms. Although no difference was found to be statistically significant in the incidence of TEAE compared with placebo groups, in general there were significantly more severe adverse events following treatment with sertraline (P =.02) (Table ). These negative results are similar to the of other clinical trials in which mesalamine was used for the treatment of depression, in which similar results existed (13, 33–35). However, this is not a direct measure of safety and effectiveness, since the rate of serious adverse events after mesalamine treatment was also significantly higher compared with those after sertraline (33, 38), and the difference in incidence rates was only found to be significant at higher doses (P <.01) (Table ). Sertraline, for which a long safety history existed because of a high incidence TEAEs in clinical trials (37), is still the most prescribed antidepressant medication in the Netherlands and was also used the most recently. When compared with sertraline, no statistically significant differences in adverse events were found between another antidepressant, escitalopram (ESC), and amitriptyline or placebo in the two trials which these antidepressants were tested. ESC is not marketed in the Netherlands for treatment of can you buy mesalamine in mexico depression (39) and thus its use might therefore have been underestimated. However, ESC, which also has a long safety record, did not show a significant difference in drugstore coupon 10 off 60 any of the criteria adverse events for different groups. However, ESC, unlike the other two active medications in this trial, is not marketed in the United Kingdom, and therefore its safety profile remains less well established there (40, 41). The most recent large double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial in the Netherlands that examined whether sertraline and other antidepressants were more effective than amitriptyline and placebo in the treatment of major depression failed to reveal an advantage of sertraline over amitriptyline in a subgroup analysis when patients were split into two equal groups. The study was therefore conducted in order to confirm the results of this study in other settings and also to evaluate whether or not sertraline was more efficient in the treatment of depression than amitriptyline or placebo. Because a previous study (32) did not find any significant difference between sertraline and mesalamine or ESC, this latter study had to be examined in further detail (Table ), as previously shown by the investigators (32, 35). Sertraline was shown to be significantly more efficient than amitriptyline in the treatment of depression, with incidence rates severe TEAEs, major adverse events (MOEs), withdrawals, hospitalisations, and death significantly lower cheapest mesalamine than those seen with amitriptyline. For all outcomes, the risk ratios of difference between sertraline and amitriptyline were significantly positively associated; the risk ratios were 2.07 (95% CI, 1.50–2.83) for seri