London, Sept. 22: Common drugs to treat nausea and vomiting increase the risk of deadly blood clots by a third, say researchers.
Hundreds of thousands of people in England take the new atypical antipsychotics, mainly for schizophrenia, but they are also used to treat common complaints like nausea, vomiting and vertigo.
Researchers said the drugs should be used more cautiously after findings from a study of more than one lakh people detected that they were associated with an increased risk of blood clots, according to British Medical Journal.
The use of antipsychotics is controversial as evidence shows that their effectiveness is limited, and charities have warned that they are used as a chemicals to subdue difficult elderly patients with dementia, reports the Telegraph.
Around 7.2 million prescriptions were dispensed for antipsychotics in England in 2009, including the newer atypical drugs examined in the study.
A team of researchers from the University of Nottingham investigated around 25,000 people who had suffered a blood clot for the study.