Posted on 01/18/2005 5:17:00 PM PST by neverdem
Two studies released yesterday have turned up new evidence that all of the popular arthritis painkillers known as COX-2 inhibitors may put users at greater risk of heart attacks and strokes.
The first of the two papers published online by the journal Circulation found that patients who had had heart bypass surgery and were taking Pfizer Inc.'s Bextra and another experimental COX-2 inhibitor were three times more likely to have strokes and heart attacks than patients taking a placebo. The statistically significant tripling of the risk showed up when researchers combined the results of two earlier studies involving more than 2,000 people in a statistical technique called meta-analysis.
A second study found that when mice that are genetically prone to hardening of the arteries were treated with a COX-2 drug and an aspirin substitute, their condition worsened rather than improving, as researchers had anticipated.
Lead researcher Garret A. FitzGerald of the University of Pennsylvania said the two studies led him to conclude that the entire class of drugs poses a risk. He also said that an upcoming clinical trial proposed by Pfizer to test whether its drug Celebrex may help patients with heart disease should not go forward.
"The clear emergence of a cardiovascular hazard from COX-2 inhibitors in patients, the weak rationale for a study of their protective properties in the first instance, and now this evidence from mice would indicate to me that a trial in high-risk patients, such as that proposed for Celebrex is, at best, ill advised," said FitzGerald, a longtime skeptic of widespread COX-2 use.
A Pfizer spokeswoman said yesterday that company officials could not comment because they had not seen the studies.
The latest bad news for makers and users of COX-2 drugs comes a month before the Food and Drug Administration is scheduled...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
FMCDH(BITS)
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I gave up Bextra when the bad publicity started. I currently am not taking any drugs of this class.
Reading all articles on this subject with interest.
If the Doctors are "chickenshit", it's the type of Medical Boards such as here in VA who have made them like that - afraid of prescribing what they know their patient's need, for fear of being indicted, and losing their license, their practice and their livelihood.
My Doctor has to send my records to Richmond (a real invasion of privacy, to my mind) for the old jerks here in No. VA to review them and make sure my Doc isn't prescribing "too many" or mailing them to me or something.
Thank God, with all the stuff coming out about the Cox-2 inhibitors and other NSAID's that my body reacted to them, and my Doctor made the decision that we had to go "for the pain", and couldn't use any of the other meds.
And it is well known by now that people using pain killers for actual pain never experience any of the "euphoria" or "high" that others feel, because all we notice is the absence of pain.
The day I can't be prescribed the meds I've been on for the past 8 years is the day I think about checking out - because my life would be so miserable without pain killers. I won't be able to get out of bed without pain, wouldn't be able to move, stand, walk - without pain and I can not imagine how I would manage to do anything. I just don't think I could live with that much pain. Fortunately, I don't have to worry about it but I am concerned that my Doc might decide to retire in several years, and I don't know what I'm going to do then. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Thank God my mother does not take these drugs. She does have to have blood tests for liver and kidney function though.
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