Drug alert

* Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, used in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, can injure or kill the developing foetus, according to an advert in the Journal of the American Medical Association (20 May 1992) taken out by four of the drug's manufacturers.

* Cyclosporine, the immunosuppression drug originally used for recipients of organ transplants, and now increasingly used for every intractable illness, has been shown to cause an Epstein-Barr virus malignant tumour in a patient with rheumatoid arthritis, plus coma, seizures and other evidence of encephalitis (New England Journal of Medicine., 14 May, The Lancet, 2 May 1992).

* Several patients taking urapidil for high blood pressure have developed chronic bedwetting (enuresis), which vanished when the drug dosage was halved to 30 mg twice daily (The Lancet, 30 May 1992).

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