Avandia finally on the way out after heart attack link is confirmed
The days of Avandia (rosiglitazone), the diabetes drug, are numbered after a new study has finally found it causes heart attack – some 11 years after it passed all the safety trials.
The discovery has been published just days before America’s drug regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), consider whether to remove the drug from the US market.
Avandia’s manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), was forced to make public its own trials into the drug, and analysis of these has revealed that it increases the risk of heart attack (myocardial infarction) by as much as 39 per cent.
The drug is designed to treat hyperglycemia (high blood glucose levels) in people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
(Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, 2010; doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2010.207).