Sleep medicine said to provoke strange behavior
Ambien, the sleeping pill that Representative Patrick J. Kennedy said he took before his car accident Thursday, is the subject of a class-action lawsuit in which several hundred patients claim the drug caused them to awake in trance-like states and drive cars or engage in other strange behavior, which they often did not remember.
The suit, filed March 6 in New York against drug-maker Sanofi-Aventis, includes testimonials from four lead plaintiffs, according to a copy of the lawsuit posted on their attorney's website. One recounts being in a car crash that she did not remember.
In a statement yesterday, Kennedy said, ''I simply do not remember getting out of bed, being pulled over by the police, or being cited for three driving infractions."
Dr. Bruce Cohen, psychiatrist-in-chief at McLean Hospital, Belmont, said that Ambien and Phenergan, an anti-nausea medication Kennedy said he was taking for the stomach flu, can both cause people to become disoriented, and that this effect could be exacerbated if the drugs are taken together.
''We don't have any way to predict who this will happen to," he said. ''But the combination of the two is going to make a problem more likely."
Still, it's unclear exactly what happened in Kennedy's case and whether other medications could have affected his behavior.
Kennedy said in his statement that he was treated for addiction to prescription painkillers in December and that he would again check into the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to continue his recovery. He did not say whether he was again taking painkillers, and if so, what type, when he had the accident Thursday morning.
Kennedy said yesterday that he has struggled with depression, and in the past he has said that he has bipolar disorder, and it's unknown whether he was taking additional medication for these ailments. And some reports from police said he appeared to have been drinking, though Kennedy said he was not. Any of these additional substances could have worsened the side effects of Ambien and Phenergan. Recently, there have been several media reports on people who said they've sleepwalked, or sleep-drove, while taking Ambien. The medication has been on the market since 1993, but sales have soared recently amid an advertising campaign. Millions have taken the drug, according to the manufacturer.
In the lawsuit, filed by New York City attorney Susan Chana Lask in US District Court in the Southern District of New York, one plaintiff, Christina Brothers of Cedar Park, Texas, said she was prescribed 10 miligrams of Ambien in May 2005. On the third day, she said, she took her dose at 1:57 a.m. The next thing she remembered was waking up on the jail cell floor, according to the lawsuit. She discovered later from a police report that she had left her house about 6 a.m, drove her mother's car into two vehicles and left the scene. The suit says she returned home, talked with her mother, and was arrested in her house that morning. She said she did not remember those events.
A US Food and Drug Administration representative said the agency is monitoring reports of side effects among people taking Ambien.
Emmy Tsui, a spokeswoman for Sanofi-Aventis, said the company does not comment on pending litigation. She said the prescribing information included with the drug lists somnambulism, or sleepwalking, as a side effect. She said fewer than 1 in 1,000 patients experienced sleepwalking during clinical trials.
