Another Large Study Finds No Increased Risk From Avandia
In "Risk of Cardiovascular Events and All-Cause Mortality in Patients Treated With Thiazolidinediones in a Managed-Care Population" the authors report on the health outcomes of over 36,000 patients with type II diabetes taking either Avandia or pioglitazone. Over five years 4.16% of the patients on Avandia suffered heart attack, heart failure or death while 4.14% of those on pioglitazone suffered similar outcomes. The difference was obviously insignificant.
Well aware of the controversy into which the journal has waded and the shrill ad hominem attacks launched against anyone suggesting that the drug doesn't increase the risk of heart attacks, heart failure or death a free editorial accompanies the study. It confesses that the evidence against Avandia is equivocal at best, frets about the find it and bind it approach to supposed biomarkers and then limply concludes "[t]hus, the simplest message might suggest the avoidance of [Avandia] until more reassuring evidence for the drug becomes available." What that evidence might be, or how much of it there ought to be, isn't discussed. I'm guessing that the hope here is that the TIDE trial is halted so that embarrassing questions don't ever have to be answered.
