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'Suspicious' death in France after medicine alert

Man's death came two days after medicines watchdog ANSM asked pharmacies to stop selling a batch of diuretic that may contain a sedative.

La rédaction de Mediapart

This article is freely available.

French police are investigating the death of a 92-year-old man as "suspicious" after he was given medicine that may have been wrongly labeled as a diuretic drug, a police representative said on Sunday, reports Yahoo! News.

The man's death on Saturday was two days after France's pharmaceutical watchdog ANSM asked pharmacies to take off the shelves 190,000 boxes of the diuretic furosemide supplied by Israeli drugmaker Teva, saying that they may contain the sedative zopiclone.

The ANSM also asked patients who had been sold some of the identified batch of boxes to return them to their pharmacies.

Police found open boxes of furosemide in the dead man's home, the representative said. An autopsy will be conducted on Monday to determine the cause of death.

Read more of this Reuters report published by Yahoo! News.