PARIS, Jan 27 (AFP) - The British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Thursday apologised to the US pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and issued a partial retraction over an article that had linked the anti-depressant Prozac with violence and suicide.
The mea culpa related to part of a news report that had appeared in the weekly's January 1 issue.
The article had said the BMJ had been anonymously handed confidential company documents which had gone missing during a controversial 1994 lawsuit over Prozac's safety.
The documents had not gone missing but in fact had all been disclosed in court, the BMJ said on Thursday.
"The BMJ is happy to set the record straight and to apologise to Eli Lilly for this statement, which we now retract, but which we published in good faith," the BMJ's correction, to be published in next Saturday's issue, said.
"We are retracting this part of the story," Kamran Abbasi, acting editor of BMJ, told AFP.
The documents included the results of a clinical trial conducted by Eli Lilly's scientists in 1988 that appeared to link Prozac with a heightened risk of aggressiveness, agitation and anxiety, the January 1 article said.
But this important data was not given to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) offical in charge of approving the drug, it said.
The lawsuit was initiated by victims of a 1989 workplace shooting in Kentucky by a man who had had a history of depression and had been placed on Prozac a month before he went on the rampage.
But the outcome of the trial was mired in controversy, when Lilly allegedly struck a behind-the-scenes deal with the plaintiffs.
The article is the latest storm to break over a class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
In 2003, drug regulators in the United States and European nations started to impose restrictions on prescribing these drugs to people under 18, after evidence emerged that SSRIs could make some depressed youngsters suicidal.
Prozac, though, was excluded from these restrictions, as it was considered to be the only SSRI whose benefits outweighed the risks.
Eli Lilly, which insists that Prozac is safe, said Thursday that it had complained to the BMJ about the implication in the January 1 article that the company had failed to disclose the internal documents.
"It is Lilly's policy to be honest in our dealings with the public, the media, regulatory bodies and our customers," said Sidney Taurel, chairman, president and chief executive officer.
01/27/2005 17:33 GMT - AFP