Avandia
Background
Avandia or Rosiglitazone, is one of GlaxoSmithKline's blockbuster drugs for type 2 diabetes. It was raking in 4.6 million pounds a day in the early months of 2007, when an independent researcher who worked at the Cleveland Clinic in America, Steven Nissen, published a controversial meta-analysis of the drug in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Nissen added up heart problem data in all the previously published studies of Avandia in order to examine the drug’s safety profile. He concluded that users are 43 per cent more likely to have heart attacks and that there is an even higher increase in the risk of fatal heart problems.[1]
In April 2008, The Scotsman reported on NHS Scotland's reaction to Nissen's meta-analysis: Doctors Demand Freeze on use of diabetes drug for heart patients
Notes
- ↑ Nissen, S., and Wolski, K. (2007) Effect of Rosiglitazone on the Risk of Myocardial Infarction and Death from Cardiovascular Causes. The New England Journal of Medicine, volume 356:2457-2471.
