Wildly popular drug causes harm: how would patients know?
It’s Lisinopril. One of the 3 most prescribed medical drugs in the US.
82 million prescriptions written in 2022.
The drug is used to treat high blood pressure and heart failure.
Major adverse effects:
Swelling of face, lips, tongue, breathing passages. Can be life-threatening.
Serious kidney problems.
Elevated blood potassium. Also serious.
Severe low blood pressure.
Liver damage.
Birth defects. Deformed skull. Kidney damage. Death of the fetus.
Lawsuits have been filed because of these effects. Most are settled privately, so statistics are hard to come by.
The FDA put a black box warning on the drug’s label concerning the birth defects: don’t prescribe the drug to a pregnant woman. But women patients don’t see that warning.
Some doctors may not be aware of the warning.
Doctors may not know, right away, that their women patients on Lisinopril have gotten pregnant.
The damage to the fetus could occur in first few weeks of pregnancy—even before the woman herself knows she’s pregnant.
If a woman is under the care of two doctors—one for blood pressure, and an ob-gyn for pregnancy—there could be a lack of communication between the doctors. And the woman ends up staying on Lisinopril while pregnant.
These are “holes in the system.” That’s one reason I’m writing this piece. To show you how even knowledge of a drug’s severe harm can fail to protect a patient.