As reported by the New York Times today. The DREAM study, which Glaxo, the manufacturer of Avandia ran to prove that Avandia would improve the health of people without diabetes so they could sell it to everyone else, instead found this:
"...patients taking Avandia had 66 percent more heart attacks, 39 percent more strokes and 20 percent more deaths from cardiovascular-related problems. That outcome, Dr. Nissen [writing in the New England Journal of medicine] wrote, “virtually precludes the possibility of an overall benefit and suggest [sic] an unexpected mechanism for harm.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/business/21drug-web.html?hp
There are already quite a few studies showing that Avandia and its evil twin, Actos, don't do much for blood sugar. What they do do, very well, is grow new, permanent, fat cells (just what someone with diabetes needs!)They also cause water swelling (edema) which can lead to the macular edema which can cause blindness, and in older women they lead to osteoporosis. It has been known for a few years that these drugs appear to cause heart failure. All these side effects have been documented in multiple studies, not just one.
But this expensive drug has been on the market, racking up profits for its maker, since 1999. It has taken 8 years for the nastier side effects to become publicly known. Several of the troubling side effects, including macular edema, were documented on my What they Don't Tell You About Diabetes web site more than a year before they appeared in the mainstream medical press. You can read detailed discussions of what the research shows about all the oral diabetic drugs at http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/14045911.php
The next time you reach for a brand new drug your doctor tells you will regenerate your beta cells, ask him how long it has been on the market and how much he knows about side effects reported after the drug was released. Until a drug has been on the market for 7 or 8 years, you can be pretty sure that information about any serious side effects has been suppressed by the drug company.
And Glaxo has made enough money from Avandia by now that even if it did kill a bunch of people to whose families they might have to pay damages, the billions the drug earned made it worth it.
Note, that the guy blowing the whistle in the NEJM is also the guy who nailed Vioxx.
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