Skin to die for?

by Emma Barlow

Acne is a skin condition that can cause social awkwardness and affects the confidence of more than 80 per cent of teenagers in the United Kingdom, according to the NHS.

To treat the condition, many young people have been prescribed Roaccutane — an acne treatment drug that has been plagued by reports of adverse side effects including depression, inflammatory bowel disease and birth defects.

Last October, Angela Lee, a 28-year-old from Ilford in east London, took her life by stepping in front of a train.

A family statement read: “In her suicide note Angela spoke about how Roaccutane had aged her body, how she would never get better and how there was no way out.”

In 2004 Jon Medland, a 22-year-old medical student from Manchester University, hanged himself some time after being prescribed the drug.

Family and friends described him as a content and hard-working student, but he reportedly felt his mental state alter almost immediately after taking the drug. He told friends that he feared this was somehow connected to Roaccutane.

After Medland’s inquest, Manchester coroner Leonard Gorodkin said: “I cannot say with any certainty that the effects of the drug Roaccutane led him to take his own life. All I can say is that the warnings that are already present should be made very clearly and strongly.”

Trainee social worker Holly Lucas, 22, who lives in Manchester, said she experienced negative side effects with Roaccutane six years ago. “It didn’t make me feel that ill at first, apart from severe dryness of the skin and lips.

“But then I developed really bad depression and had to take six months off college. Although the treatment was very effective I always thought there should be an age limit on how old you can be when taking the drug. “I was 16 and I still found it very difficult, especially as you can’t drink alcohol while taking it. This meant I missed out on spending time with my friends and that probably didn’t help my depression,” she said.

A 2007 study by the University of Bath suggested a link between the drug and depression.

Dr Sarah Bailey, who headed the study, said: “There is a proportion of the population that is vulnerable to depression side effects, and we don’t know how to predict that at this point. The number of people who get the side effects is very small compared to the total number of people who have ever taken the drug.”

Roaccutane, or Accutane as it is known in the United States, has been a controversial drug since it was introduced in 1982.

Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG, the manufacturer of the drug, faces millions of pounds worth of lawsuits as former users file cases against them.

According to Michael Hook, a lawyer based in Florida, Roche faces as many as 5,000 personal injury claims in the United States over the drug.

Among these is the death of 15-year-old amateur pilot Charles Bishop, who crashed his plane into a building in Florida in 2002. This prompted a $70 million (£45 million) wrongful death lawsuit, filed by relatives who believed that Accutane had caused Bishop to commit suicide.

In November 2009, a state court jury in New Jersey found company officials did not properly warn doctors about the drug’s health risks and awarded three men who had previously taken the drug a total of £8.3 million in damages.

Between 2000 and 2007, Accutane consistently appeared in the US Food and Drug Administration’s adverse events database as one of the top 10 drugs linked to psychological side effects.

Roche has denied any link between the use of the drug and behavioural side effects. The company stopped selling Accutane in the United States in June 2009, citing serious challenges from generic competitors and high costs from personal injury lawsuits that it continued “to defend vigorously”.

Roaccutane continues to be sold in the United Kingdom.