GlaxoSmithKline's Medical Director, Dr. Ronald Krall has recently issued a statement defending the company's diabetes drug Avandia® in a letter to the medical journal The Lancet (a pdf file).

The said letter is GSK's response to the research reported previously in the New England Journal of Medicine which revealed a 43 percent increase in heart attacks among diabetics who took Avandia® - the research finding that started all this issue on Avandia®.

However, according to Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the Health Research Group at the Washington, D.C.-based consumer watchdog organization Public Citizen:

...diabetics using Avandia should focus on scientific data. GlaxoSmithKline has financial reasons in mind when reporting that Avandia poses no risks to diabetics.

When they say it's safe and doesn't produce a heart-attack risk, I can understand that as a marketing strategy, but it does not accord with the facts. They're trying to counter the bad publicity their drug has gotten over the past couple of weeks."

I think Dr. Wolfe has a huge point. Anyway, even at a scientific standpoint, it is difficult which to believe (whether Avandia really causes heart attcks in diabetics) because we as the consuming public is just at the mercy of these two camps throwing their own clinical data for us to interpret.

Discuss the issue thoroughly with your physician...and if you are not comfortable with continuing on with Avandia...well, you can always have your doctor switch you to a different diabetes drug. ;-)

Source: Newsday

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