Parents who purchased children's fluoride tablets at one New Jersey pharmacy are being urged to doublecheck their pill bottles after tablets used to treat breast cancer were found mixed into some prescriptions.
The CVS Pharmacy in Chatham apologized for the error and said it is contacting every family that filled a prescription for 0.5 mg fluoride at the store in the last 60 days to determine if any tamoxifen medication was mixed in.
Fluoride and tamoxifen tablets look similar, though it's not exactly clear how the mix-up happened.
Tamoxifen has been used for decades as a breast-cancer treatment. Serious known side effects of the drug are blood clots, strokes, uterine cancer and cataracts, according to the National Cancer Institute.
CVS said it's continuing to follow up with families who believe their children received the wrong medication, but most of the families representatives contacted did not believe there had been a problem with their prescriptions.
"We are actively investigating this matter to determine how the mistake occurred in order to take corrective actions to prevent this from happening again," the pharmacy said in a statement.
"Prescription errors are a rare occurrence, however since any process involving people is not immune from the possibility of human error, we are committed to continually improving quality measures to help ensure that prescriptions are dispensed safely and accurately."
