I have just had a look at yellow card reports and it was an interesting but puzzling read.
I was unable to find report for liotho but found comparative reports for NDT and Levo. It showed that NDT had no related deaths and very few reported side effects. Levo had however quite a few deaths and plenty of serious side effects. Not sure if this is just based on reports in uk or wider but what I found strange is that in the past five years serious side effects and deaths with levo have increased dramatically. I was trying to make sense of this. Got a bit paraniod that the endos are trying to kill us off.
I also wondered if we should keep our own record, especailly of those that self treat of any side effects or incidents. It might help demonstrate safety of doing so and help people learn from any mistakes.
One thing to bear in mind with any medicine side-effect statistics is :
Who is doing the reporting?
Until I started getting involved in looking after my own health I would have assumed that doctors kept records of these, or if they were reported to some central repository (like the MHRA) then doctors would do this. (Until a few years ago my naïvety knew no bounds!)
But I have discovered two things :
1) Apparently most doctors rarely, if ever, report side effects to the MHRA.
2) Patients can report side effects to the MHRA themselves using the Yellow Card system. And how many patients know that? Probably very few. I certainly didn't until a few years ago. But perhaps the info is speading?
I am guessing that any apparent increase in side effects for levo could be for loads of reasons :
1) More patients have been reporting side effects themselves.
2) The increasing cost of T3 has meant that more and more people who need it aren't getting it, so more and more people are suffering on Levo.
3) And another question... How long has info on the Yellow Card system been online? I know that when I first heard about the system a few years ago that I found the MHRA website difficult to navigate and find this Yellow Card info and the reports info. I don't bother navigating it any more, so I don't know how easy it is to find - I've got the links I need bookmarked!
The link I use for looking up Drug Analysis Prints is this one :
Many thanks for this most important information HB as well as well informed comments.
Indeed I too like most people was rather naive in matters relating to health and the doctors’ care or rather lack of! We definitely cannot trust them with our life and health. They don’t care. So the onus falls on patients. It makes one wonder why they are so well rewarded financially when in fact they only do the very minimum ...
Will make notes of links. Thanks again .
Dr dont report very often so the increase must be down to patient reporting. I imagine if any of us did die as a result of taking t3 or ndt and endo or unfreindly GP would be very quick to report. Having read the info I am not going to get into a panic if my heart gets all thumpy again on NDT I shall just consider it health exercise.
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Aaaargh. Wits end
