2 Top Cardiologists Disagree with Galaxo’s New Avandia Study
Saturday, November 15th, 2008According to the recent Forbes article “Is Avandia All It’s Plagued Up to Be?” experts are calling Glaxo SmithKline’s recent study “inconculsive” and said Avandia should not be used due to recent findings that the drug can increase heart attacks and cause death.
According to Forbes:
The study, called APPROACH, used a technique called intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) to measure how thickly plaque built up in the heart arteries among patients taking either Avandia or Glucotrol, a different type of diabetes drug. The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in New Orleans.
The IVUS technique was pioneered by Steven E. Nissen, the same Cleveland Clinic cardiologist who put Avandia’s cardiovascular risk in the spotlight. Last March, he presented a study of Avandia’s main rival, Actos from Takeda, that showed that the drug significantly decreased the amount of plaque in coronary arteries.
Glaxo said in a release that the APPROACH results show that Avandia is similar to Actos. APPROACH enrolled 672 patients and obtained artery images for 462 of them.
James Stein, an expert in cardiovascular imaging technologies at the University of Wisconsin, says “given the possibility that Avandia does cause heart problems, physicians and patients should consider other diabetes pills.”
“There’s really no reason anybody should be using Avandia,” says Stein. “It’s time to give this drug a rest. There are better, safer alternatives.”
GlaxoSmithKline (nyse: GSK) has steadfastly defended Avandia’s cardiovascular safety. Nesto co-authored an analysis of existing trial data saying that there is no risk for the drug.