Rosiglitazone

(Best Syndication News) Researchers say that the lower cost generic diabetes drug Metformin is safer than once thought. In a study published in the October 27 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals, Elizabeth Selvin, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues make the case that the lower cost drugs may be just as good as the more expensive new drugs.

“Treatment with metformin hydrochloride was associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular morality [death] compared with any other oral diabetes agent or placebo; the results for cardiovascular morbidity [illness] and all-cause mortality were similar but not statistically significant,” the authors wrote.

Following a recent study that suggests one new drug, rosiglitazone, is associated with cardiovascular risk, Selvin and her colleagues performed a meta-analysis of data from 40 clinical trials published on or before Jan. 19, 2006. The participants ranged in average age from 52 to 69 in 68 percent of the studies.

After evaluating the various studies they found no evidence that metformin was was associated with a cardiovascular risk. “No other significant associations of oral diabetes agents with fatal or non-fatal cardiovascular disease or all-cause mortality were observed,” Selvin wrote. “When compared with any other agent or placebo, rosiglitazone was the only diabetes agent associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, but this result was not statistically significant.”

The researchers recommend that we reevaluate the way new drugs come to market. They say that requiring the pharmaceutical companies to extend the length of the trials would bankrupt them. Perhaps a phased introduction of new medications with uniform, standardized collection of adverse outcome data might identify relatively rare complications before the drugs are used by millions.

By Jeffrey Workman
Best Syndication News Health Writer