PHENERGAN RARELY USED FOR STOMACH FLU NAUSEA

The drug that Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.) said he took to treat
an inflamed stomach is commonly used to control the nausea from
prescription painkillers and rarely used for stomach ailments,
experts said Friday.

Phenergan is also sometimes used by drug abusers to enhance their
highs from opium-derived painkillers, such as OxyContin and Vicodin,
said Dr. Bankole Johnson, an addiction expert at the University of Virginia

He added that it was also frequently given to recovering painkiller
addicts to manage their withdrawal symptoms.

Phenergan is a powerful drug, commonly used by cancer patients who
need to take high doses of opiates to control their pain.

Johnson said using it to quell the nausea of gastroenteritis,
sometimes called stomach flu, is virtually unheard of. "It would be
like using morphine to treat a paper cut," he said.

Julie Dopheide, associate professor of pharmacy at USC, agreed that
Phenergan was an unusual choice for stomach flu, which is generally
transient and mild.

"Most doctors would not prescribe an anti-nausea medicine for the
stomach flu unless the person was throwing up violently," she said.

Kennedy, who crashed a car into a barrier in Washington before dawn
Thursday, said he had taken Phenergan and the sleep medicine Ambien.
Kennedy said he had no recollection of the crash or his subsequent
interaction with police.

On Friday, Kennedy said that he would be getting treatment for a
recurrence of his addiction to unspecified painkillers. He said he
had been treated for his addiction at Christmas at the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minn. He blamed the recurrence of his addiction on the
treatment for his stomach flu.

Johnson said he was not surprised that Phenergan had a role in
Kennedy's addiction. The drug is a mild sedative. If Kennedy had used
the drug or a similar medicine in the past while taking painkillers,
Phenergan's sedative effect might have prompted a linked urge for
painkillers, he said.

"The sedation ... can act as an external cue triggering a craving," he said.

The other drug Kennedy said he took, Ambien, is also used at times by
drug abusers, Johnson said. It can boost the effect of the
painkillers and "mellow out" a high, he said.

Ambien, also a prescription drug, has been associated with very rare
cases of people driving or walking in their sleep. People often have
no memory of their actions when they wake up.

In many of those cases, people were taking extremely high doses of
the drug, mixing it with alcohol or taking antidepressants, experts said.