Switch to Generics Blamed for Seizures

Bloomberg News reports, "Ginny Miller blames her son's string of epileptic seizures on a generic medicine that she says she expected to work as well as the original brand-name treatment." Her son "went seven weeks without an episode while taking Zonegran, made by Tokyo-based Eisai Co," and "after pharmacists switched him to generic copies made by four different companies, he suffered multiple seizures daily and was hospitalized three times before doctors identified differences between the medications as the cause, said Miller, of Dayville, Connecticut." Now, "armed with more than 1,000 similar reports, the Epilepsy Foundation of America and other patient-advocacy groups are pressing lawmakers in at least 33 states to stop pharmacies from substituting generic drugs for the originals before patients and their doctors are alerted to the changes."