Avandia – the discredited type II diabetes drug – continues to be prescribed by doctors, and is still killing around 100 people every month, even though it was identified as being potentially lethal three years ago. Astonishingly, the drug has stayed on the market despite the findings of a report in 2007 that demonstrated it was killing around 19 per cent of patients, and was causing non-fatal heart problems in a further 8 per cent.
Its manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has been fighting hard to keep the drug on the market, but its days may finally be numbered, according to confidential papers circulating within America’s drug regulator, the Food and Drug Administration. Avandia (rosiglitazone) causes around 500 heart attacks and 300 cases of heart failure every month, the report discloses, and was responsible for 304 deaths in the third quarter of 2009. Two of the report’s authors, David Graham and Kate Gelperin, are calling for Avandia to be removed from the market – finally.
(Source: New York Times, February 20, 2010).