Popular nasal decongestant doesn’t actually relieve congestion, FDA advisers say

Keywords FDA / Pharmaceutical
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One thought on “Popular nasal decongestant doesn’t actually relieve congestion, FDA advisers say

  1. What a weird time for the FDA to decide, with no warning that this was even percolating (at least not broadly conveyed through newsmedia–does anyone remember this in 2007?), that decades-old OTC nasal decongestants are suddenly ineffective.

    Convenient that it happened as temperatures are dropping, right before cold and flu season, right when people get their vaccines.

    If they were truly utterly useless, they would have lost market demand a long time ago. Even if their primary function is akin to the placebo effect, people’s direct experience with them is positive enough that they keep buying Dayquil and Sudafed. Demand for these cheap OTCs is still super-high, and mostly for the original intent (notwithstanding Sudafed’s unintentional role in certain amphetamines).

    “Patients require and deserve medications that treat their symptoms safely and effectively and I don’t believe that this medication does that.”

    So what medications do treat their symptoms safely (these are OTCs for crissakes) and effectively, Jennifer? Should we be getting ready for the roll-out of another vaccine that will receiving FDA’s ringing endorsement, courtesy of Merck or Johnson & Johnson, the same companies who financed these phenylephrine studies?

    If I were more conspiratorially minded, I’d think this is another example of the increasingly incestuous relationship between government regulating agencies and private business. But my tinfoil hat blew off in the wind several weeks ago. Guess I need to find a new one.

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