Interim Study Investigates The Risk Of Avandia Drug
There has been a debate over Avandia (Rosiglitazone), which is used in treating diabetes. It is made by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and earned 1.4 billion US dollars in sales last year.
The aim of a drug trial was to reveal if Avandia medication raises the risk of heart attack and death from cardiovascular problems in patients with type 2 diabetes.
Interim results showed that Rosiglitazone diabetes was connected to higher risk of heart problems compared to other diabetes drugs, however, the difference was small and insignificant.
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has recently reported the the interim results of RECORD (Rosiglitazone Evaluated for Cardiac Outcomes and Regulation of glycemia in Diabetes). RECORD is considered to be a prospective clinical trial that compares hospital admissions and deaths in 2,220 patients who received generic Avandia dual therapy (Avandia with metformin or sulfonylurea) to that of 2,227 patients treated with metformin and sulfonylurea in combination.
As researchers said, there was found no statistically significant difference between the Avandia medication and the control groups with respect to heart attack and death from cardiovascular causes. But they marked there were more patients with heart failure in the Avandia drug group compared with the control group.
