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Health Sciences Authority
Dear Healthcare Professional Letters

Smecta®: Restriction of treatment of acute diarrhoea to children >2 years of age and adults, and recommendation against use in pregnant and breastfeeding women

Audiences

Healthcare professional

Industry member

Product type

Therapeutic Products

9 March 2020

This article has been migrated from an earlier version of the site and may display formatting inconsistencies.

A Dear Healthcare Professional Letter has been issued by Emerging Pharma to inform healthcare professionals of changes to the use of Smecta® (dioctahedral smectite or diosmectite) in children and in pregnant and breastfeeding women. Elements such as lead occur naturally in soil and trace amounts of these elements can be found in food and water. Naturally occurring diosmectite – the clay from which Smecta® is produced – contains trace amounts of lead too. In compliance with international guideline, the product owner of Smecta® (Ipsen) has conducted a data review and a clinical study which did not find evidence of any actual risk related to lead in adult patients with chronic diarrhoea treated with Smecta® for 5 weeks. Other data developed by Ipsen confirmed the safety profile of Smecta® in the children population with treatment duration of up to 7 days. As a precautionary measure and taking into consideration the lack of data in pregnancy and breastfeeding, Ipsen has decided to restrict the indication of Smecta® for treatment of acute diarrhoea to children 2 years of age and above and in adults, and to recommend against the use of Smecta® in pregnant and breastfeeding women. Please refer to the letter for details.

Only abstracts of the Dear Healthcare Professional Letters (DHCPL) are provided on this website. Details of these letters can be found in the MOH Alert System, which is accessible via the Health Professionals Portal (HPP), a one-stop portal for all healthcare professionals in Singapore. Dentists, medical doctors and pharmacists may access HPP at https://hpp.moh.gov.sg (opens in new tab) and follow the procedures below to access the MOH Alert system.

Step 1: Select your profession under ‘For Healthcare Professionals’.

Step 2: Click on ‘Useful links’.

Step 3: Click on ‘MOH Alert’ and log in via Singpass.

Step 4: Click on ‘Drug Alerts’ or ‘Med Device Alerts’ to view the DHCPLs.