Avandia Heart Risks May Be "Inconclusive"
Researchers from the New England Journal of Medicine are reporting that data on Avandia's overall heart risks are "inconclusive." Researchers say that they have not yet established if there is an association between Avandia and heart attacks or Avandia and heart disease in general. The Food and Drug Administration says that Avadia and another diabetes drug, Actos, will be required to carry a "black box" warning about the heightened heart attack risk from taking the drug.
In May, researchers conducting an interim study found that Avandia appeared to increase the risk for heart problems. The maker of Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline, says that the findings are flawed because the data that was analyzed was not specifically looking for heart risk. A more recent study in which half of the participants took Avandia and a combination of metformin and sulfonylurea and the other half of the participants only took sulfonylurea-metformin found that there was not an increased risk of heart attack or heart problems in general in patients who were taking Avandia. However, heart failure was 2.15 time more common in the Avandia group.
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