Diabetes Drug Avandia should be pulled from the Market
ANDREW BRIDGES The widely used diabetes drug Avandia should be pulled from the market because of heart risks, a federal scientist said Monday. Those risks, combined with no unique short-term benefits in helping diabetics control blood-sugar levels, fail to justify keeping Avandia on the market, according to a copy of a slide presentation by Food and Drug Administration scientist Dr. David Graham. The document was distributed at the onset of a daylong meeting of a joint panel of outside experts convened to consider whether the drug should be restricted to use in select patients and branded with prominent warnings or removed altogether from sale. Previously, the FDA said information from dozens of studies of the GlaxoSmithKline PLC drug points to an increased risk of heart attack. Glaxo officials, meanwhile, disputed that claim, citing their own analyses of studies of Avandia, also called rosiglitazone. "The number of myocardial infarctions is small, the data are inconsistent an...