Common Diabetes Drug may cause Heart Disease


heart diseaseAccording to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a commonly used diabetes drug may increase the chances of having heart disease or a stroke.

In a study that consisting of about a quarter million Type 2 diabetic patients, patients who were taking Avandia were at a higher risk of having a heart attack than those who were on Actos, a competitor drug. The risk of heart failure was about 25 percent more and that of stroke was 27 percent higher in those patients who were on Avandia.

This is not the only time Avandia has been in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. A study in England in 2007 had suggested the same thing. This incident had also prompted an inquiry by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

But doctors are still sceptical about the evidence against Avandia. According to Dr. Richard Bach, the director of the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, “In my opinion the data is inconclusive. The weight of the evidence needs to be considered while judging a drug. And I would not say that the evidence against the drug is strong enough to say that the drug is harmful“