4 ms·
My brother-in-law, who has a mental disability, saw a gastroenterologist for abdominal pain. They found worms and prescribed him a drug to get rid of the worms
by dkarl 7y ago
My brother-in-law, who has a mental disability, saw a gastroenterologist for abdominal pain. They found worms and prescribed him a drug to get rid of the worms.
The doctor said the worms could cause abdominal pain, but then again in most cases they don't, so he also put him on a drug for irritable bowel syndrome.
After a couple of weeks, the stomach pain went away, but meanwhile my brother-in-law was having issues with mental coherence, drowsiness, and sleep disturbances. Other people who interacted with him were concerned about him, too. He has a mental disability and diabetes and other health issues, so our first thought was the usual suspects, not his IBS medication, but eventually I realized that neither my wife nor myself knew anything about it, so I looked it up.
It turned out the new medication was an antidepressant with a laundry list of side effect, including drowsiness and sleep disturbances. We weaned him off it, and he came back to normal pretty quickly. No stomach pain, either.
So, to sum up, the doctor saw a patient with worms and abdominal pain and decided to put him on an antidepressant for the rest of his life because the kind of worm infestation he had would only cause pain in a minority of cases.
- astura 7y agoI actually suspect a fairly large amount of those prescriptions were for off label use. But... Seems like the sort of side effects these medicines have should give us a pause when using them on vulnerable populations. Especially when the benefits are not especially clear.
- dkarl 7y agoYou're exactly right. IBS is a legit off-label use for the antidepressant my brother-in-law was prescribed. I suspect doctors hear about these off-label uses and don't weigh the psychoactive effects because they're writing the prescription for a physical problem.
- lonelappde 7y agoHow is that an acceptable side effect for approving an off label use?
- kirrent 7y agoWhile I'm glad you and your wife figured it out in this case, if you or a family member has new symptoms, especially after being put on new medications, see your primary care physician or the prescribing doctor. Side effects are an unfortunate reality that doctors deal with all the time and they'll be able to work out an alternative.
- m0zg 7y agoI was actually surprised that antidepressants are prescribed for IBS quite often. My son used to suffer from IBS (grew out of it), and his doctor wanted to put him on, I kid you not, Prozac. That's for a still developing kid at like 10 years old. He said he prescribed Prozac pretty much all the time when he suspects that the cause of IBS is psychosomatic. Another unpleasant revelation was just how little is known about this presumably fairly common condition. Nobody knows how to diagnose it, and there's no cure. If you don't grow out of it, you're stuck with it for life, and many people don't grow out of it.