• Question: Who is Opren?

    Asked by thivyansuthan to Jack, Tom, Yalda on 20 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 20 Mar 2013:

      I had not heard of this, but had a quick look on the internet and have now found out. I assume you mean the drug?

      It was an anti-inflammatory drug (so it reduced the swelling get from an infection) used to help against arthritis. But it was found to be linked to a number of deaths of patients that took it. So it is not used anymore.

      There are many drugs that don’t make it through the trial stages before we use them on humans. But sometimes drugs do pass these trials, they seem to help people and don’t have bad side-effects, and sometimes these drugs are found to be not so good after all! We have to keep checking all the drugs we use and make sure they are working properly and safely, so we can help the maximum number of people.

    • Photo: Yalda Javadi

      Yalda Javadi answered on 20 Mar 2013:

      Do you mean Opren the drug?

      It’s the brand name for Benoxaprofen, which is an anti inflammatory drug. It caused some nasty side effects that killed some people, mainly from kidney and liver failure, about 30 years ago.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 20 Mar 2013:

      They’re a cereal-eating chatshow host – a cross between Oprah and Alpen… 🙂

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 21 Mar 2013:

      Tom’s right – Opren is a sad story of a drug having unwanted side-effects which weren’t seen in tests. Many people had kidney/liver failure and died as a result. We always try to do the best testing possible to prevent this from happening because when things do go wrong it can cause tragedies like this. That’s why the testing stages for drugs take so long. Unfortunately things do go wrong sometimes – scientists try to make sure cases like this are as rare as possible.

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