Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Takeda’s Actos Has Same Heart Risks as Glaxo’s Avandia - BusinessWeek

Patients taking Avandia or Actos were 4 percent more likely to experience heart attacks, heart failure or die, according to the study published yesterday in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation.

Actos become the market leader after a 2007 study showed a 43 percent higher chance of heart attacks from Avandia, which generated $3.3 billion of sales before the findings. The latest study, the first to compare the drugs, suggests the risks are tied to that category of medicine, Jenny Gunton, a diabetes researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, said.

“It just maybe increases the worry of using either of the drugs,” Gunton, who wasn’t involved in the study, said in a telephone interview from Sydney. A rate of 4 percent is “pretty high” given the short study period, she said.

Posted via email from Jack's posterous

2 comments:

David said...

I looked at Actos a year ago and was very concerned about its a) lack of measured efficacy b) association with heart disease.

Actos said...

Avandia is the same pill like actos?