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Fifteen-year-old Hannah remembers last March like it was yesterday. She was staying with a friend while her mother was out of town, and she began to come down with what she calls flu-like symptoms. “But I started to get even more sick then I already was,” she said. Rashes were forming on her skin and blisters in her mouth. Her friend’s mother was alarmed and took her to the hospital. Hannah was transferred to a room and underwent tests.
The Guardian has updated a recent health story about the epilepsy treatment oxcarbazepine, also known as Trileptal. According to the report, two serious adverse reactions have been associated with the medication– Stevens Johnson Syndrome (SJS) and its more severe form, toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN). The reactions have occurred in both adults and children.
The serious adverse reaction to medication known as Stevens Johnson Syndrome, or SJS, is rare in the U.S. and most countries, occurring in about one person per million each year. However, doctors at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan, have seen as many as 40 to 50 cases of SJS in only a year. “Sometimes we see two or three in a single week,” says Ghung Wen-Hung, a researcher at Chang Gung, who was quoted in the Taipei Times.
Researchers like Wen-Hung are asking why.
Gary Beatham had been blamed for her death. He couldn’t understand why.
Beatham’s girlfriend of two years, Louise Armstrong, came down with flu-like symptoms in late December. The morning of New Year’s Eve, Beatham woke in their Penrith, Australia, home to find his partner gravely ill with blisters covering her body. He called the ambulance, but it was too late. Armstrong had died.
It was bad enough that Jean McCrawley’s infant daughter Julie was diagnosed with epilepsy, but two weeks after she was prescribed phenobarbatol to treat her seizures, she woke up with a swollen eyes and a high fever. Jean took her daughter to the doctor who discovered blisters forming on the little girl’s shoulders and mouth. He diagnosed her with chicken pox.
But the blisters got worse. They spread down her throat and little Julie was unable to drink her bottle because of the pain. Jean rushed her daughter to the hospital, where doctors continued to administered the phenobarbatol for her seizures. But Julie’s health continued to decline. Four days later the little girl’s lungs collapsed and her skin began coming off in sheets. That’s when a nurse realized what was going on. “This is Stevens Johnson Syndrome (SJS),” she said. Jean was relieved to have a diagnosis, but the doctor said, “This is extremely serious. She could die.”
Last month when Kim Oake was bitten by a feral cat while working as an animal control officer in Canada, she was given Clavulin, a common antibiotic to ward off infection. The antibiotic nearly killed her. Her family wants to know why people aren’t told about the serious, life-threatening reaction that could occur by taking common drugs, according to CBC News.
Children treated with lamotrigine for epilepsy who have a medical history of skin reactions to medication, use multiple drug therapies including the drug valproate, and cannot be adequately control their seizures with medication may be at greater risk for adverse skin reactions, according to Peer View Media Bar.
Lamotrigine is an anticonvulsant drug to treat partial seizures, primary and secondary tonic-clonic seizures in epilepsy and seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. It also is FDA-approved to treat bipolar disorder.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating the possibility that phenytoin and fosphenytoin sodium increase the risk of serious skin reactions, such as Stevens Johnson Syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN), according to FDA MedWatch. Phenytoin and fosphenytoin are used to control tonic-clonic (grand mal) and complex-partial seizures in epilepsy.
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