Avandia Heart Attack In The News

The regulatory agency is alerting diabetes-drug makers, like Amylin, of new heart-safety data standards.

The type 2 diabetes epidemic that continues to sweep across the United States has left an estimated 24 million Americans struggling with the disease, up more than 3 million people since 2005. Doctors are trying to reverse the tide in two ways.

Source: Reuters (Adds company comment, paragraphs 15-16) By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Older diabetics who took GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia to control their blood sugar had a higher ...

Nov. 24, 2008 – Two ever popular drugs for senior citizens to use in treating diabetes are in the news again, but this time one stands alone as the culprit.

Dr. Robert Califf, the respected Duke University cardiologist and head of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, is a possible candidate for FDA commissioner.

Drug companies are putting a positive spin on papers published in the medical literature relative to what they submitted to the FDA for drug approval. The result is that doctors are using potentially misleading information when making prescriptions.

Older diabetics who took GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia to control their blood sugar had a higher risk of death and heart failure while on the drug than those who took Takeda Pharmaceutical's Actos, a drug in the same class, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

A similar diabetes drug, Actos, doesn't seem to carry same dangers, study finds.

By Julie Steenhuysen

MONDAY, Nov. 24 (HealthDay News) -- The widely used diabetes drug Avandia -- already controversial because of cardiovascular side effects -- may be riskier than Actos, another drug in the same class, researchers reported Monday.