[Diabetes-talk] News about diabetes medication.

[Michael Park]

  The article that follows, reminds me of a documentary program 
broadcast some time ago, concerning the introduction of new medications 
to the market. The program concerned, dealt with the specific instance 
of a drug that was introduced to the market and which was aimed at 
dealing with Rheumatoid Arthritus. As apparently often happens with new 
drugs, companies are so eager to get them out into the market that not 
all of the safeguards for trials are adhered to, or in some instances, 
the drug is launched wiwith some of the safeguards even being absent 
altogether.

In the Rheumatoid Arthritus case, some of the results of experiments 
carried out, were never disclosed with the result that when it came to 
later trials actually involving human beings, if my memory serves me 
right, 3 people died while 9 others were rendered invaleed as a result 
of participating in experiments with the drug. The diabetes medication 
mentioned in the article below, seems to be subject to the same fate.

I am publishing this article here in its entirety, just below the link 
in case some of my readers have problems accessing the internet to look 
up the story for themselves.

Fears over safety of diabetes drug.

September 26, 2010 at 11:33am.
By Melanie Peters.

Source:
http://tinyurl.com/36gqm44

The present link is a shortened form of the original link which was 
created by
http://www.tinyurl.com

South African health authorities are investigating the risks of a 
diabetes drug that was taken off the shelves in Britain last week and 
has had restrictions placed on its use in the US.

The European Medicines Agency also announced it was suspending the 
drug’s licence after a safety review, which means doctors can no longer 
prescribe it in Europe.

Patients have been advised to see their doctors.

British newspapers reported that the drug Avandia, also known as 
rosiglitazone, taken by 100 000 diabetic Britons, had been banned 
because it was believed to increase the risk of heart attacks.

Avandia was launched 10 years ago as a new way to reduce blood sugar in 
patients with type 2 diabetes.

The Medicines Control Council said it had been registered as a medicine 
in South African since 2002.

Council registrar Mandisa Hela said: “The risk-benefit ratio of 
rosiglitazone is being assessed by the council and its 
pharmaco-vigilance expert committee. But no decision (to ban the drug) 
has been reached yet.”

Last week Britain’s Daily Mail reported that there had been mounting 
concern about Avandia. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration, 
which does not have the legal power to suspend the drug, has also 
slapped further restrictions on its use.

Avandia was once one of the best-selling drugs in the world, with annual 
sales peaking at R33 billion in 2006. Last year British doctors wrote a 
million prescriptions for it.

The BMJ (British Medical Journal) earlier this month called for Avandia 
to be withdrawn on safety grounds and doctors urged authorities to 
withdraw the drug – used by as many as 100 000 patients.

The BMJ said the drug increased the risk of heart attacks and should 
never have been licensed in Britain.

Made by the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, it used to be the 
company’s second biggest- selling drug, raking in about R21 billion a year.

But sales plunged when the US linked it to heart attacks in 2007.

And in July, Bloomberg News in the US said GlaxoSmithKline had made 
headlines when it agreed to pay about R420m to resolve a majority of the 
lawsuits alleging Avandia had caused heart attacks and strokes.

In a statement, GlaxoSmithKline’s chief medical officer Ellen Strahlman 
said: “Our primary concern continues to be patients with type 2 
diabetes, and we are making every effort to ensure that physicians in 
Europe and the US have all the information they need to help them 
understand how these regulatory decisions affect them and their patients.”

She said the company continues to believe that Avandia was an important 
treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes. It said it would work 
closely with regulatory agencies. - Weekend Argus.

-- 
Michael Park
"I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, and not forsake them." (Isaiah 42:16 NKJV).

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