FDA approves killer med for toddlers

As far as horrific drugs are concerned, the blockbuster Enbrel may be the worst of the worst.

Enbrel carries a black-box warning for fungal and deadly bacterial infections… and cancer and TB. Even the FDA issued a warning about a very rare kind of white blood-cell cancer years ago.

But none of that seems to matter, because Enbrel was just given the agency’s okay to be used by toddlers as young as four to treat psoriasis.

Immune zappers

Enbrel was originally approved back in 1998 for rheumatoid arthritis. And it looks like the only thing keeping pace with all the additional FDA approvals for it are the rate at which its new black-box warnings keep appearing.

In 2008 a warning for “invasive fungal infections” was added. The next year, the FDA ordered another black-box warning, this time for TB and cancers in children. Two years after that, it was about potentially fatal infections from Legionella pneumonia (commonly know as Legionnaire’s disease) and Listeria.

And all the while the FDA kept saying “yes” to the drugmaker Amgen, giving it more and more ways to sell the drug to doctors. Last week it got the agency’s blessings for it to be injected into children as young as four.

But if the FDA knows about all these side effects, it’s got to be doing something to protect these kids, right?

Well, of course it is!

Five years ago it devised a plan called the “10-year postmarketing commitment.” The drugmakers behind these biologics, called TNF blockers (which include Humira, Remicade and Enbrel) are required to keep tabs on all the children they learn of who come down with cancer while taking them.

And by 2021 we may have the results.

Are you kidding me?

The FDA is also on the information bandwagon, asking doctors to notify them about any cancers in kids and young adults taking these meds.

But some of the scariest findings go back to a warning the FDA issued in 2008 about how these types of TNF drugs may be linked to a rare and very deadly childhood cancer called Hepatosplentic T-Cell Lymphoma, or HSTCL.

This cancer, which typically strikes kids and young adults, is very aggressive and almost always fatal.

Look, the FDA has known for years that these kinds of drugs knock your immune system for a loop and leave you open to all kinds of terrible diseases and infections. And to think about them being used in children where it could be setting the stage for a deadly cancer is absolutely horrifying.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, appears to be able to put the brakes on Enbrel. With all we know by now, this drug should have been banned years ago. And yet here we have the feds approving it for tots while doing busywork collecting data on how it may be killing them.

It’s unbelievable!

If your child or teen has been diagnosed with psoriasis, heavy-duty, immune zapping drugs such as Enbrel should not even be on your radar.

Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease, and like others such as RA or Crohn’s, following an anti-inflammatory diet is a must. And one, very frequently used option for psoriasis is exposure to good old-fashioned sunlight or even types of light therapy.

But a med that’s linked to seizures, heart and blood problems, fatal infections, deadly cancers and even “new or worsening psoriasis” is one that should have never ever been approved for kids in the first place.

“FDA OKs etanercept (Enbrel) for kids with plaque psoriasis” Megan Brooks, November 7, 2016, Medscape, medscape.com