The attorneys at the Singleton Law Firm are devoted to helping you receive compensation for the injuries you may have received while taking the drug Reglan. Reglan can be administered by tablets, oral disintegrating tablets, solution, or injections. It was approved for the market April 4, 2004, and is manufactured by Baxter Healthcare. The FDA approved the drug for short-term use, four to twelve weeks, only when conservative treatment fails. While the drug has only been approved for short-term use, approximately one-third of patients have been (are being) prescribed the drug for twelve months or longer.

In 2009, the FDA required all manufacturers Reglan (and other Metoclopramide containing drugs) to issue a Black Box Warning (the association’s most severe warning) to all information regarding the product. Physicians must now be aware that it has been shown to cause spasms and tics when used for long periods of time or at high doses. Problems include uncontrollable movement of limbs, face, and tongue. These side effects are usually irreversible, even after patients stop taking Reglan.

Reglan should be used with caution in conjunction with Parkinson’s disease and Clinical Depression. Patients with Parkinson’s disease may develop worsened symptoms, and those with Clinical Depression may experience a worsened mental state. The drug may also cause rare but serious side effects.

Common side effects of Reglan include the following: dizziness, lassitude, restlessness, drowsiness, dystonic reactions, fatigue, constipation, or diarrhea. Lassitude is a condition of weariness, debility, or fatigue. 

Infrequent adverse reactions include headaches, oculogyric crisis, hypertension, hypotension, and hyperprolactinaemia, leading to galactorrhaea, diarrhea, constipation, and depression.

Rare, but serious, adverse reactions may include the following: agranulocytosis, super ventricular hyperaldesteronism, depression, neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS), or tardive dyskineasia.

Agranulocytosis is an acute febrile condition marked by severe depression of the granulocyte-producing bone marrow and by prostration, chills, swollen neck, and sore throat sometimes with local ulceration and believed to be basically a response to the side effects of certain drugs of the coal-tar series. Super ventricular tachycardia (SVT) is a rapid rhythm of the heart in which the origin of the electrical signal is either the atria of the AV node. Symptoms can include the following: pounding chest, shortness of breath, chest pain, rapid breathing, dizziness, loss of consciousness, and elevated blood pressure. Hyperaldosteronism (or aldosteronism) is a condition that is characterized by excessive secretion of aldosterone and typically by loss of body potassium, muscular weakness, and elevated blood pressure.

Long-term use of Reglan, and the Black Box Warning states, can cause Tardive Dyskinesia, which is a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary uncontrollable movements especially of the mouth, tongue, trunk, and limbs occurring especially as a side effect of prolonged use of antipsychotic drugs. Symptoms of this condition are nearly impossible to reverse and no treatment currently exists for Tardive Dyskinesia.

One in four patients that take Reglan for a year or more may develop Tardive Dyskinesia. The risk of developing the condition rests heavily on dose and duration, and the elderly and infants are at the largest risk. Tardive Dyskinesia can even, at times, adversely affect the ability to breathe, swallow, walk, and talk.

Reglan has also been linked to Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, which is more often caused by an adverse reaction to neuroleptic or antipsychotic drugs. It generally presents with muscle rigidity, fever, autonomic instability, and cognitive changes such as delirium, and is associated with elevated creatine phosphokinase.

NMS, normally associated with antipsychotic drugs, is an extremely serious syndrome that can usually create a neurological emergency or death. In most cases the disorder develops within the first two weeks of treatment with Reglan; it may also, however, develop at any time during the treatment period.

Symptoms of NMS include the following: high fever, sweating, unstable blood pressure, stupor, muscular rigidity, autonomic dysfunction, changes in blood pressure, or stupor. Autonomic dysfunction is a disorder of the autonomic nervous system that causes disturbances in all or some autonomic functions and may result from the course of a disease or form injury or poisoning.

If you or a loved one have experienced any of these side effects contact the Singleton Law Firm.  The attorneys will work diligently and help you receive reimbursement for your Reglan injuries.  At the Singleton Law Firm, our lawyers will earn your trust.