Diabetes Drug Avandia Significantly Increases Heart Failure Risk

Diabetes drugs Avandia and Actos Signiciantly Raise Risk of Heart Failure July 27, 2007

Drugs prescribed to 100,000 patients in Britain to treat diabetes double the risk of heart failure, a study has suggested. The finding is a blow to GlaxoSmithKline, whose drug Avandia is one of the drugs involved. The new analysis, which pools data from 78,000 patients, finds that one in fifty patients treated with either Avandia or a similar drug, Actos, for two and a half years would be admitted to hospital with heart failure. The two drugs reviewed in the new analysis in Diabetes Care are prescribed to millions of patients to treat type 2 diabetes. They are approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for use on the NHS. Both are also approved by the US FDA and used widely in the USA and Canada. The drugs already carry a warning that they are not suitable for patients suffering from, or at risk of, heart failure. But the new study suggests an increased risk even for those who have never suffered the condition. Two advisory panels for the US Food and Drug Administration are now reexamining both drugs. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine in May linked Avandia to a 43 per cent increased risk of heart attacks. The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) said that its Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) is carrying out a reevaluation of both drugs. The new research was carried out at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Wake Forest University in North Carolina, in the US. It was led by Yoon Loke, a clinical pharmacologist at UEA. The experts suspect that the drugs cause fluid retention, which could trigger heart failure. Alastair Benbow, the European medical director of GlaxoSmithKline, said: “Long-term studies have not shown an overall increase in heart deaths between patients taking Avandia and other diabetes drugs. “Heart failure can be well managed by using diuretics, and we have to remember that type 2 diabetes itself has devastating consequences, including stroke, blindness, amputation and kidney failure.”

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