This Could Save Someone's Life: Do You Know Anyone Taking Avandia for Diabetes?

A bit different focus today---jumping to the 'other side' for a moment---because a big part of WELLNESS involves knowing what NOT to take and finding SAFER, HEALTHIER options. Please share this with anyone you know who may be taking Avandia, a popular diabetes medication.

Check out these excerpts from an article in today's New York Times(2-20-2010):
Hundreds of people taking Avandia, a diabetes medicine, needlessly suffer heart attacks and heart failure each month, according to confidential government reports that recommend the drug be removed from the market.

Avandia, intended to treat Type 2 diabetes, is known as rosiglitazone and was linked to 304 deaths during the third quarter of 2009. “Rosiglitazone should be removed from the market,” one report, by Dr. David Graham and Dr. Kate Gelperin of the FDA, concludes. Both authors recommended that Avandia be withdrawn.

The internal FDA reports are part of a fierce debate within the agency over what to do about Avandia, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline. GlaxoSmithKline said that it had studied Avandia extensively and that “scientific evidence simply does not establish that Avandia increases” the risk of heart attacks.

Avandia was once one of the biggest-selling drugs in the world. Driven in part by a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, sales were $3.2 billion in 2006. But a 2007 study by a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist suggesting that the drug harmed the heart prompted the FDA to issue a warning, and sales plunged. A committee of independent experts found in 2007 that Avandia might increase the risk of heart attack but recommended that it remain on the market, and an FDA oversight board voted 8 to 7 to accept that advice.

Hundreds of thousands still take the medicine, although some top endocrinologists say they have sworn off the drug.

The bipartisan multiyear Senate investigation — whose results are expected to be released publicly on Monday but which were also obtained by The Times — sharply criticizes GlaxoSmithKline, saying it failed to warn patients years earlier that Avandia was potentially deadly.

“Instead, G.S.K. executives attempted to intimidate independent physicians, focused on strategies to minimize or misrepresent findings that Avandia may increase cardiovascular risk, and sought ways to downplay findings that a competing drug might reduce cardiovascular risk,” concludes the report, which was overseen by Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, and Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican.

Mr. Baucus said of the report, “Patients trust drug companies with their health and their lives, and GlaxoSmithKline abused that trust.”

In response, GlaxoSmithKline said that it disagreed with the Senate investigation’s conclusions. The company said that it could not comment on internal FDA documents but that “the official ruling from FDA is that Avandia remain on the market.”

Safer, healthier options are available for those with type 2 Diabetes, involving simple lifestyle changes. I look forward to your comments and questions.

May you be blessed with true wellness...
Sana