['The Examination is an independent nonprofit newsroom that investigates preventable health threats and empowers people in harm’s way']
Grünenthal pushed its latest opioid as a safer option. People around the world got hooked.
Fueled by misleading marketing claims, the German drugmaker’s painkiller tapentadol is on the rise.
Extracts below.
Read in full: https://www.theexamination.org/articles/gruenenthal-pushed-its-latest-op...
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In the last five years, prescriptions of this [tapentadol] have surged, propelled by some of the same sorts of misleading assertions about its addictive properties that ignited an opioid crisis that now claims more than 100,000 lives each year worldwide.
Grünenthal, the family-owned German company that developed tapentadol, has marketed the drug as a safer alternative to traditional opioids, downplaying the risk of addiction to doctors and influencing regulation governing how it can be prescribed, an investigation by The Examination and news outlets across six countries has found.
In a medical journal, Grünenthal employees touted the drug’s supposed “low level of abuse,” a misleading claim repeated in a video posted on the company’s educational website for Latin American doctors... Grünenthal took down the educational website at the end of February following The Examination’s inquiries...
Grünenthal and other opioid sellers have funded tapentadol-related studies and articles in peer-reviewed journals that suggested tapentadol was less likely to cause dependence or lead to abuse than other opioids. Six independent experts who reviewed this research on behalf of The Examination and its partners reached a unanimous conclusion: There is no convincing evidence to support such claims...
Addiction specialists have called Grünenthal’s promotion misleading and dangerous. “There is a feeling among doctors, nursing staff, but also patients that these are harmless substances,” said Dominikus Bönsch, medical director at the District Hospital Lohr am Main in Bavaria.
“It’s pure nonsense,” he said. “A myth.”
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HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org