Once again the dangers of the type 2 diabetes drug Avandia are revealed

Broken Bones & Broken Hearts

A type 2 diabetic has to be diligent.

In order to maintain good health, he has to curb his diet and get regular exercise. But he also has to constantly be on guard to avoid mainstream blather about diabetes medications.

If you happen to be a type 2 diabetic, please take a moment to power up your malarkey detector because you’re going to need it to make sense of some mainstream commentary about the newest study that examines Avandia – a very unsafe drug.

Model of consistency

How do I know Avandia is unsafe? Easy. I went to avandia.com, and right there on the home page I found this: “AVANDIA can cause or worsen heart failure.”

Can’t say they didn’t warn us.

In the new study (published in the Lancet and presented at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association), more than 4,400 type 2 diabetics were divided into two groups to receive Avandia (also known by its generic name rosiglitazone), or a combination of two other popular type 2 diabetes drugs (metformin and sulfonylurea) for about five years.

The results: “Addition of rosiglitazone to glucose-lowering therapy in people with type 2 diabetes is confirmed to increase the risk of heart failure and of some fractures, mainly in women.”

Discouraging? Not a bit. Here’s how Dr. Philip D. Home (lead author of the study) put a fresh coat of happy sunshine on the results: “The findings essentially are that, in overall cardiovascular terms, the drug is safe.”

Okay – let’s consult the malarkey detector. On a 1-10 scale, Dr. Home’s comment rates…Yes! A perfect 10! Well done, Dr. Home!

You might wonder how Dr. Home figures the drug is “safe” when his study has just confirmed increased heart failure risk. Maybe it’s because in the “interpretation” of the study, he and the other authors state that Avandia did not increase the risk of cardiovascular illness or death compared to the other two drugs.

And yet, in the study “findings,” here’s how they put it: “Heart failure causing admission to hospital or death occurred in 61 people in the rosiglitazone group and 29 in the active control group.”

Once again – the malarkey detector gives it…another perfect 10!

See what I mean? Without a reliable way to assess grade-A malarkey, a type 2 diabetic might read Dr. Home’s comments and come away believing Avandia is no more dangerous than pure spring water.

Your hit parade

This isn’t the first time the e-Alert has featured Avandia warnings.

In 2003, I first told you about the link between Avandia and an increased risk of congestive heart failure. And in the e-Alert “Heart Floss” – which I sent you more than four years ago – I told you about this warning posted on the FDA web site: When Avandia is taken with other oral diabetes medicines, there’s a risk of “blood sugar becoming dangerously low.”

And of course our old friend Dr. David Graham has weighed in on Avandia.

Dr. Graham is an FDA drug safety scientist who has consistently been 100 percent malarkey-free in his assessment of dangerous drugs – earning him an odd-man-out status at the agency. In a 2007 e-Alert, I told you about a quote Dr. Graham gave the Associated Press. He said that keeping Avandia on the market “makes no medical sense and violated the principle taught us all in medical school…First, do no harm.”

Unfortunately, when Dr. Graham speaks, the FDA rarely listens.

If you’re a diabetic who’s taking Avandia, or if someone you care about is taking this drug, you can easily find information about non-drug methods for managing blood sugar in the HSI archives on our website: hsionline.com. Be sure to talk to your doctor before making any changes in your current regimen.

You can also use this link to access a free HSI report titled “Diabetes Defeated,” which features several botanicals that help improve glucose metabolism.

Sources:
“Rosiglitazone Evaluated for Cardiovascular Outcomes in Oral Agent Combination Therapy for Type 2 Diabetes (RECORD)” The Lancet, published online ahead of print 6/5/09, thelancet.com
“Avandia Raises Risk of Heart Failure, Fractures” Amanda Gardner, HealthDay News, 6/5/09, healthday.com