How getting up to ‘go’ during the night can turn deadly
What lengths would you go to treat a condition called “nocturnal polyuria?”
That may sound serious, but it’s nothing more than a fancy way to say someone needs to go to the bathroom during the night.
Sure, that can be annoying, especially if it happens a lot. But the new drug the FDA just approved to allow a “small reduction” in your number of bathroom visits is downright scary.
And if your doctor even suggests that you take this med, called Noctiva, don’t walk, but run in the other direction!
Noctiva is nothing more than a recycled use of desmopressin, an old generic drug.
Desmopressin is used to treat a rare kind of diabetes, hemophilia and a condition that causes people to urinate too much because of a head injury or brain surgery. It works by forcing your kidneys to absorb more water, so you urinate less.
Only now, your average Joe (or Jane) who tells their doctor that they just don’t sleep through the night without a bathroom trip or two is at risk for being handed a Noctiva Rx.
And here’s what they may be trading some of those bathroom visits for:
- Critically low levels of sodium, a condition called hyponatremia. Noctiva came out of the gate with a black-box warning for that, which is something that can lead to seizures, coma, respiratory arrest and…death. In fact, if you take it, you’ll need to have your sodium levels periodically checked to make sure you’re not teetering on the edge of disaster.
- Retention of fluids, which can be a deadly condition for those with heart disease.
- Other commonly reported side effects, such as A-fib (an abnormal heart rhythm), dizziness, back pain, bronchitis and an increase in blood pressure.
And even for those who are willing to take those risks, or perhaps simply were never told about them, this drug doesn’t appear to stop those pesky bathroom visits, but rather offer merely a “small reduction” in them.
Apparently getting up to pee during the night is so common that it’s literally a chamber pot of gold for Big Pharma. In fact, a couple of years ago another drugmaker attempted to get a similar desmopressin product on the shelf for the very same “condition.”
And guess what? Not only didn’t the drug get a nod of approval from the FDA, but the agency’s advisory committee turned it down twice! When does that ever happen? It was reported at the time that the FDA wasn’t convinced that the drug’s benefits outweighed its risks.
Whatever the secret sauce was that got this new med out of the FDA’s golden gate… we may never know. But however it happened, it’s a done deal, and you or someone you love could now be at risk of being told by your doctor to “just give it a try.”
Certainly getting up to “go” during the night can make having a good night’s rest really difficult. But before you resort to a risky drug like Noctiva, there are some other things to think about first.
For guys, an enlarged prostate can put pressure on the bladder and make you need to go more. Since some drugs, especially diuretics, increase urine production, you might try taking those kinds of meds in the morning instead of at bedtime.
Sleep apnea is another problem that can make you need to use the bathroom during the night, and frequent urination can also be a sign of diabetes.
And last, but certainly not least, as we get older, our bladders don’t hold as much as they once did. So, needing to go more isn’t necessarily a disease or condition that needs a risky drug to treat it, but simply one of those things that can happen as we age.
“FDA okays drug for frequent nocturia” Peggy Peck, March 3, 2017, Medpage Today, medpagetoday.com
