Friday, February 19, 2010

Glaxo, AstraZeneca Shares Fall After FDA Finds Asthma Drug Risk - BusinessWeek

GlaxoSmithKline Plc and AstraZeneca Plc declined in London trading after U.S. regulators warned against long-term use of their Advair and Symbicort asthma drugs and called for further study of their potential health risks.

The combination drugs “should only be used to treat asthma for the shortest time necessary,” said Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in the conference call. “This is a change from current guidelines, but we believe this is best supported by the existing data on the safety” of the long-acting beta agonists.

Posted via web from Jack's posterous

1 comment:

David said...

I've been looking into this issue with great interest. There's been a black box warning on Advair for some time, but my analysis was that it was not a significant issue.

Now the issue seems to need reexamination.

Thanks for sharing!