It is time to discourage dietary supplements and homeopathic remedies in pain patients.

摘要

Last June 18, Matrixx Initiatives, the maker of the nonprescription, homeopathic cold remedy Zicam, announced a withdrawal of the product following numerous reports of patients who used the product to treat the common cold losing their sense of smell. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been carefully monitoring these reports. But under federal law, such remedies explicitly do not require FDA approval prior to marketing and the agency can only mandate withdrawal after accumulating a large amount of evidence that the product represents a serious threat to the public health. The Zicam recall was voluntary, but would have most probably been enacted by the FDA soon thereafter had the manufacturer not acted due to the mounting evidence that Zicam causes aguesia.