Manufacturer Pulls Darvon, Darvocet; FDA Wants Generic Makers to Do the Same

Nov. 19, 2010— -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that it is pulling off the U.S. market the prescription painkillers Darvon and Darvocet, which combines Darvon with the aspirin substitute acetaminophen, because of new scientific evidence they can damage the heart, even at recommended doses, or cause fatal cardiac abnormalities.

The manufacturer, Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Newport, Ky., agreed to withdraw the two brand-name drugs. The agency now is asking manufacturers of generic propoxyphene to do the same.

Propoxyphene-containing drugs have been banned in Great Britain since 2005. The European Medicines Agency in June 2009 recommended their gradual removal from the European Union market after concluding risks, including the risk of fatal overdose, outweighed pain-relieving benefits.

The FDA called upon the pharmaceutical companies to stop making propoxyphene (PPX) based upon a clinical trial in which electrocardiograms demonstrated that the drug altered the heart's electrical activity, potentially causing serious or life-threatening arrhythmias.

"These new heart data significantly alter propoxyphene's risk-benefit profile," Dr. John Jenkins, director of the Office of New Drugs at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), said in a statement. "The drug's effectiveness in reducing pain is no longer enough to outweigh the drug's serious potential heart risks."

Dr. Gerald J. Dal Pan, director of CDER's Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology, said that with the new results, "for the first time we now have data showing that the standard therapeutic dose of propoxyphene can be harmful to the heart."

Dal Pan said that the cardiac changes aren't cumulative and that "once patients stop taking propoxyphene, the risk will go away."

About 10 million Americans took a prescription containing propoxyphene for mild to moderate pain in 2009, the FDA said. That same year, the agency announced an ongoing safety review of the drug.

Darvon, developed by Eli Lilly and Co., received FDA approval in 1957 and has been a controlled drug since 1976.

According to an FDA memo from Dr. Bob A. Rapaport, director of the FDA's Division of Analgesia and Anesthesia Products, "there have long been concerns about PPX's safety. Reviews of the drug generated over the years have demonstrated PPX to be only mildly effective (although the studies are quite old and analgesic studies frequently demonstrate only limited efficacy.)"

With the newest data, he wrote, "it became apparent that the risk for the individual patient can change at any time, even after prolonged chronic use."