Chlordiazepoxide history

A San Francisco woman with a history of diabetes and high blood pressure was hospitalized in January 2001 with a life-threatening low blood sugar concentration after she consumed Anso Comfort capsules (260). The authors conjectured that hospitalization may have been necessitated by a drug interaction of chlordiazepoxide with medications that she was taking for other medical conditions. 

In treatment-resistant cases, benzodiazepines, either long-acting (diazepam, clonazepam, and chlordiazepoxide) or short-acting (alprazolam, oxazepam, and lorazepam) may be used when the patient does not have a history of addictive behavior. Also, they can be combined with SNRIs/SSRIs in the first weeks of treatment before the onset of the therapeutic effects of the latter. Benzodiazepines as monotherapy may not be as robust as assumed. Among patients responding to treatment, less than two-thirds will go into remission, and a number of studies have indicated, despite early improvements in anxiety symptoms, that the effect of benzodiazepines may not be different from placebo after 4-6 weeks of treatment. 

A furtlier study was based on interviews of 278 mothers of children with selected major birth defects who had been exposed to various tranquillizers during the first trimester (46 "). It was found that a history of diazepam ingestion during the first trimester was four times more frequent among mothers of children with oral cleft abnormalities than among mothers of children with other defects. These authors did not find a similar relationship between anomaly and chlordiazepoxide, and the difference between two benzodiazepine compounds in this respect is unexplained. Despite the overall increased use of diazepam in the area of the study there was no accompanying increase in the incidence of oral cleft abnormalities. The authors indicate that the relationship is not necessarily causal. 

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