Free Republic

See this thread first, for example.\ A jury has just now cleared Merck They said its Cox-2 drug will work Sing, "Vioxx for pain!" And here's the refrain: "A class action lawyer's a jerk"

A recently identified path of inflammation once thought to be wholly independent of other inflammatory systems has now been linked to another major pathway. The findings by neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins are likely to point scientists to novel drugs that significantly reduce the risks of taking COX-2 inhibitor pain relievers, the investigators report. In a paper published in the Dec. 23 issue of Science, a Johns Hopkins team led by Solomon H. Snyder, M.D., said the iNOS (inducible nitric oxide synthase)-based inflammation pathway has now been found to cross-link with the more well-known COX-2 pathway that is the target of...

After a panel of medical experts gave a very cautious nod to the continued use of the painkillers Celebrex, Vioxx and Bextra on Friday, pain management experts said they expected to see the same caution transform the way the painkillers are prescribed from now on. The drugs, which had been hugely popular for people with both short-term and chronic pain, will be prescribed much less readily, for a smaller group of patients, at lower doses and for shorter periods, the experts said. "I am still very concerned about the cardiac risks of these medications," said Dr. David Campen, director of...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 - A federal drug advisory panel unanimously agreed today that the huge-selling painkillers Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx cause worrisome heart problems, but its members voted to recommend that all three nonetheless be available to patients, accompanied by strong warnings of the risks. The panel only narrowly supported the continued marketing of Pfizer's Bextra or the return of Merck's Vioxx, voting 17-13 on Bextra and 17-15 on Vioxx. The panel was much more comfortable supporting the continued marketing of Celebrex, favoring the Pfizer painkiller 31-1. The Food and Drug Administration, which has the final word on the regulation...

WASHINGTON - Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) concluded Friday the popular painkiller Celebrex poses an increased risk for heart problems but should remain on the market because the benefits outweigh the dangers. The panelists suggested a number of possible restrictions, including placing a "black box" warning on the label warning of the potential dangers and who's at risk, providing more patient information with the drug, restricting which patients could get it and banning direct-to-consumer advertising for Celebrex. The FDA is not bound to follow any of the recommendations. If it does decide to keep...

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...

Suppose there were an anti-inflammatory drug that sharply reduced the level of CRP, the protein that has proved to be as powerful an indicator of heart disease risk as high cholesterol. A doctor might well prescribe such a drug for a patient with high levels of the protein. After all, CRP is linked to inflammation, and high levels of it are linked to heart attacks. As it turns out, there are such drugs. But this may not be good news. The anti-inflammatory drugs that lower CRP levels are COX-2 inhibitors, the very drugs that were recently found to increase the...

Researchers Assess Risk-Benefit Ratio The spate of bad news about painkillers has dealt a major setback to what had been a highly promising effort to use the drugs to prevent a host of leading killers, including many types of cancer, Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. Since concerns emerged that drugs such as Vioxx and Celebrex might cause heart attacks and strokes, researchers testing the drugs in dozens of studies have been frantically scouring whatever data they have gathered so far for signs of danger, urgently debating whether the trials should continue, and quickly informing participants of possible risks. Several...

Pfizer warned doctors yesterday that one of its best-selling painkillers, Bextra, might increase the risk of heart attack or stroke in coronary artery bypass surgery patients. The announcement comes just two weeks after Merck removed from the market its painkiller, Vioxx, which is in the same class of medicines as Bextra, because a study showed that the risk of heart attacks doubled for patients who had taken Vioxx 18 months or longer. Pfizer said a clinical study involving more than 1,500 patients showed that those who had undergone bypass surgery and had taken Bextra intravenously and orally were at higher...