Labels on two smoking cessation treatments will offer less severe warnings for mental health risk potentials in people with no history of psychiatric disorders, the Food and Drug Administration has announced.
Varenicline (Chantix) will no longer include a boxed warning for serious mental health side effects. The label for bupropion (Zyban) will still include a boxed warning, but language describing the potential for serious psychiatric adverse events will no longer appear within it. Updates will also be made to both labels to describe side effects on mood, behavior, or thinking.
In addition, varenicline’s label will reflect trial data showing its superior efficacy, compared with oral bupropion or nicotine patch. Although a patient medication guide will still be included with each prescription, the risk evaluation and mitigation strategy that prompted the guide will no longer be in place.
Earlier this year, two FDA advisory committees voted in favor of updating varenicline’s label, based on data from a randomized, controlled trial of more than 8,000 smokers, half of whom had a history of psychiatric disorders.
The trial showed no clinically significant difference in risk of adverse events across the smoking cessation treatments varenicline, bupropion, nicotine patch, or placebo study arms, although the risk was higher in the psychiatric cohorts in each.
Overall, 2% of those without a history of mental illness experienced neuropsychiatric adverse events, compared with between 5% and 7% of those with such a history.
The trial was cosponsored by Pfizer, maker of Chantix, and GlaxoSmithKline, maker of Zyban.
The FDA approved varenicline for smoking cessation in 2006 and approved bupropion, which also is indicated to treat depression and seasonal affective disorder, in 1997. After numerous postmarketing reports of increased incidents of psychiatric disorders occurring in smokers who used either drug, the agency added the boxed warning to each in 2009.
FDA officials advised clinicians to guard against changes in mental health status in smokers using these therapies. However, “the results of the trial confirm that the benefits of stopping smoking outweigh the risks of these medicines,” they noted.
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