Epilepsy drugs including Topamax, Lamictal, Lyrica Neurontin and 7 others must carry label warning of suicide risk.

Bloomberg.com reported on December 17 of 2008 that the US Food and Drug Administration finally responded to a 20-0 vote of outside experts on an Advisory recommendation from July and will require a suicide warning risk on 11 different anti-seizure medications.  After reviewing 199 studies of 11 epilepsy medications, scientists concluded that patients taking them should be monitored for worsening depression or suicidal ideations.  The patients suffered 4.3 suicide events per 1,000 patients, compared with 2.4 suicide events for patients receiving a placebo.  That translates into one suicide-related "event" (not necessarily an attempt) for every 350 patients treated.  Manufacturers, and particularly Pfizer, Inc., fought the recommendation.  The warning won't be a "black box" warning of strictest caution.  Approximately two million Americans suffer from epilepsy.   Currently, several of these drugs are also being used to treat psychiatric disorders.  We believe that the latter treatment is "off label", or not approved by the FDA, however, we did not investigate that issue.