Is IV Cyclazine addictive?
This question has been bugging me for a while, and I just want to hear others views/perspectives.
So, for context, I've been qualified for 18 years, I've worked in Emergency/Acute medicine for the large majority of my career and yet in the last 18 months I have seen an increasing amount of patients (mostly young women between 20-26) come into hospital with abdominal pain of unknown origin, with nausea and vomitting. They have all been under Gastro, (we get a lot of Gastro outliers on my ward) none of them were allowed to have IV cyclazine. No allergy, no side effects. Just point blank refusal to prescribe.
For example, one young girl had horrific nausea and vomiting linked to a gallbladder issue and hadn't kept anything down for 48 hours. She'd had ondansetron with limited effect but it was documented in her notes that "patient cannot have IV cyclazine due to drug seeking behaviour" one of our senior doctors relented and allowed her one dose and she was like a different person. She ate and drank and looked so much better. I spoke to the doctor later and they said they were limiting how much she could have because they didn't want her to become addicted to it.
I have seen people become confused and disoriented after having it, it is listed as a side effect that it can make people feel dizzy, and yet in all my years of practice, I've never heard of it being addictive until recently. Is it a new thing? I'm happy to be educated but refusing anti nausea meds seems sort of counterintuitive if someone has been vomiting for multiple days.
What does everyone else think?