Diabetes Drug Tied To Heart Risk In Study

[Morning Glory]

(CBS/AP) Avandia, the biggest-selling diabetes drug in the world, is linked to a greater risk of heart attack and possibly death, says a new scientific analysis published online Monday.

More than 6 million people worldwide have taken the drug sold by London-based GlaxoSmithKline PLC since it came on the market eight years ago. Pooled results of dozens of studies revealed a 43 percent higher risk of heart attack, according to the review published by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Experts said the overall risk was small and cautioned people not to stop taking the drug on their own but to talk to their doctors.

The company downplayed the report of heart risks, saying the analysis by Dr. Steven Nissen and statistician Kathy Wolski at the Cleveland Clinic is not definitive scientific proof. In a conference call Monday, Dr. Lawson McCartney, who leads Glaxo's diabetes drug development, said the company is not seeing "anything like" the problems reported in the medical journal.

"We remain very confident in the safety and of course in the efficacy of Avandia as an important diabetic medicine," McCartney said.

GlaxoSmithKline earns $3 billion a year from the drug, the biggest-selling diabetes drug in the world, according to Forbes magazine.

The government will take no immediate action on a label change or other measures regarding the drug, said Dr. Robert J. Meyer of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

FDA officials acknowledged that Glaxo submitted information last August indicating some increased risk from the drug but that other studies were contradictory. However, several members of Congress expressed alarm at the report and said they would hold hearings on the safety issues.

Avandia is used to treat Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, which is linked to obesity and afflicts 18 million Americans and 200 million people worldwide. This form of diabetes occurs when the body does not make enough insulin or cannot effectively use what it manages to produce. Avandia helps sensitize the body to insulin and was considered a breakthrough medication for blood-sugar control.

Worried patients should not quit Avandia on their own and should discuss concerns with their doctors, wrote Drs. Bruce Psaty and Curt Furberg in an editorial in the New England Journal. Psaty is with the University of Washington in Seattle and Furberg is with Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.

However, to the extent that the new analysis shows valid risks, the drug "represents a major failure of the drug-use and drug-approval processes in the United States," they said.

When the drug was approved, "evidence was at best mixed" on its benefit, wrote the two doctors. Both have been frequent critics of the FDA's failure to spot dangers in the drug approval process and its conduct in the case involving Vioxx. The popular arthritis medicine sold by Merck & Co. was taken off the market in 2004 when heart problems came to light after it had been taken by millions of people

Several experts said Avandia was another example of the FDA failing to detect a safety problem early enough.

"This study is sure to increase criticism of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approving Avandia in the first place," said CBS News correspondent Barry Bagnato.

Glaxo's shares trading in the United States fell $3.85, or 6.6 percent, to $53.89 in afternoon trading.

The report on the diabetes drug's risks follow Glaxo's $2.5 million settlement of a lawsuit filed by former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer over the release of data on the safety and effectiveness of its drugs. Spitzer, now New York governor, accused Glaxo of fraudulently withholding some results of studies that had examined the safety of prescribing the antidepressant Paxil to children.

GlaxoSmithKline disputed that it attempted to mislead anyone, and said it has always been in favor of widespread disclosure of clinical trial results.

The company's clinical trials registry (http://ctr.gsk.co.uk) is available to the public, although the reports within it are highly technical and may appear incomprehensible to an untrained reader.

In a study published last September, the drug rosiglitazone (Avandia) appeared to cut the risk of developing diabetes or dying by more than half. It also helped restore normal blood-sugar function in many participants. That study involved about 5,000 people with "pre-diabetes," or blood-sugar abnormalities.

But even that study's researchers acknowledged that a small percentage of those on Avandia developed heart failure.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...r=HOME_2831501

[Nina Kay]

Thanks for posting this here, MG. I've been hearing alot about this on the news today. It seems to put everyone that is at risk in a state of unrest. I guess each person would have decide under their own circumstances whether it would be worth it to continue to take that risk. The news said that the most reliable studies wouldn't have answers until the year 2009. That's a long time and alot of lives at risk, it seems to me. Back to the importance of praying & trusting God to guide us to make the best decision.

[Morning Glory]

I've worked with many client's with diabetes and I've never seen this medication used.

This is the first I've heard of it. It might be because most of my clients use Medicaid and Medicare and this medication probably isn't covered. There are lots of other medications available. When they did this with the hormone replacement therapy I could no longer get it. They may just cut out this medication in the same way and replace it with something else.