• Question: what are the effects of taking medication that was not made to treat your illness?

    Asked by sloth-savior to David, Sarah, Zoe on 20 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Sarah Ashwood

      Sarah Ashwood answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      The problem with medication is there are often going to be side-effects. This can range from something minor like needed to pee more often to more noticeable problems like dizziness/hair loss or something similar.
      Taking medication that isn’t for an illness you have means you get any of the negative side effects with none of the benefits of treating the condition!

    • Photo: David Foley

      David Foley answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      This happens more often that we care to admit.

      At its worst, drug companies illegally “push” their medicines for use “off-label” (for disease other than that for which it was tested). Companies have been fined serious money for doing this in the past.

      At its best, it is called drug repurposing – taking an existing drug and identifying a new disease that it works against. A text book case is aspirin – originally developed for pain, now used for stroke, heart disease, cancer and many more disease.

      As a child, you are constantly exposed to drugs not designed to treat your illness, as we do not conduct clinical trials on children unless the disease only affects children. But since children are (obviously) very different to adults (still growing, hormonal responses etc), there are still some unknown risks.

      In general though, as Sarah said, you should only take drugs prescribed to you by your doctor. These should have been tested and shown to treat your illness, at least in an adult and with extensive history of use in children. Otherwise you do run the risk of side effects with no benefits.

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