In the coming days, this anti-allergy medication will no longer be available over the counter in pharmacies. To get it, you will systematically need a prescription. This is a decision taken by the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines after noting abuses of the latter throughout the world. We give you more details.
After the antidiabetics used to lose weight, here is an antiallergic used for weight gain, more precisely to enlarge the buttocks and chest. For this purpose, the drug authority alert and requires that its sale be only by prescription from July 10, 2024. This decision was announced on June 27, 2024 by the ANSM in a press release sent to France info. Let us recall that information measures had been put in place since 2022, but the misuse and the risks that go with it have persisted.
Periactin now sold under medical prescription
What is Periactin?
Periactin is an allergy medication. It is prescribed to adults and children over six years of age for the symptomatic treatment of allergic reactions such as conjunctivitis, urticaria and allergic rhinitis. This antiallergic contains an antihistamine, an active substance cyproheptadine and is sold in pharmacies without a prescription. However, its improper use East dangerous and some use it as an orexigenic to increase appetite, to enlarge the buttocks and breasts and completely change their appearance. Periactin has been promoted on social networks by influencers.
Improper use
It’s Poupette Kenza, a widely followed influencer on the Internet who launched the Periactin trend to increase the buttocks volumeCapital reports. The product would have an immediate effect according to her. “That’s at least three kilos gained for me, in less than a month”She keeps, “the goal is to draw a marked waistline to create the illusion of an hourglass silhouette similar to that of the famous Kim Kardashian”, she declared in one of her very popular videos on the web. While associations are doing their best to ensure access to medicines for patients in the face of shortages, the medical profession is sounding the alarm on the misuse of this product.
A decision taken to preserve health
The goal here is to look like some celebrities like French influencer Maeva Ghennam. Only, this misuse risky is what led the ASNM to proscribe the over the counter of the product. To obtain it, you will now need to present a prescription. A decision that is going in the right direction, because the drug can cause side effects such as vision problems, drowsiness or palpitations. As proof, a teenage girl suffered from graves palpitations last December after taking the medication.
Significant side effects
The side effects
Like any other medicine, Periactin can cause Side effects. “We have had reports of serious adverse effects, convulsions, agitation, or drowsiness, urinary retention, tachycardia, constipation, dryness of the mucous membranes. These effects are not trivial”says Isabelle Yoldjian, medical director of the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines. Although the drug promotes weight gain, it is not always localized in the desired areas, another caution from the director of ASNM. As a reminder, Periactin is not the only drug that will no longer be freely available.
A practice to stop
Other influencers are going in the same direction in order to discourage this type of dangerous practices for health. One of them says “Me, girls, I took 5/6 a day, I was addicted to this medication, I found myself too thin and I absolutely wanted to gain weight, in the space of a month I gained almost ten kilos”. In the same video, she adds “But this drug is destroying your life, it will make you sleep all the time, it will knock you out. You will have dizziness and nausea, it is a drug that is extremely bad for the liver, it destroys it”.
A trend that emerged in Africa
This treatment, until 1994, was officially indicated to increase appetite in people suffering from weight loss. The balance between the risks and the benefits had been deemed insufficient. However, the first off-label use appeared in Africa before evolving in Europe, particularly in France. In conclusion, the medical director of the ANSM declares “We are in the same fight: the fight against the use of drugs for aesthetic purposes. When we move beyond the medical, it can become extremely dangerous.”
