FDA Requires New Warnings For Immediate-Release Opioids.

reports in “To Your Health” that the Food and Drug Administration announced that “it will require new warnings about the risk of addiction, abuse, overdose and death for short-acting opioid pain medications.” The boxed warning for immediate-release opioids “also will warn of the danger that chronic use of the drugs by pregnant women can result in...Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome” in newborns. The new warnings “will emphasize that immediate-release opioids should be a last resort for severe pain” and will provide “clearer instructions to prescribers about how to administer the drugs and monitor patients.” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf “called opioid addiction one of the most ‘urgent and devastating public health crises facing our nation’ and said the new labels were just part of the government’s larger strategy for” combating it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/03/22/fda-adds-new-warnings-on-risk-of-addiction-overdose-and-death-for-some-prescription-opioids/