This diabetes drug is even more hazardous than we thought

For years Takeda Pharmaceuticals has been playing a game of duck and cover with its diabetes drug Actos.

It all boils down to the $64,000 question – does Actos cause bladder cancer, or not?

And even now, with a huge study that looked at over 145,000 diabetics for 13 years and laid the cancer cards out on the table, the drugmaker is still crying foul.

I’ve been telling you about this alarming debate for years. Now, however, a new study delivers the evidence that anyone who takes this med will be dreading to hear.

A costly bargain

Even for a drug company, it takes a lot of gall to set aside close to $3 billion to settle lawsuits over bladder cancer, and then turn around and say, “Don’t worry, there is no risk.”

Of course try and tell that to Bill, who had multiple surgeries and months of chemo for bladder cancer less than two years after taking Actos for type 2 diabetes.

You certainly couldn’t get Terrence to believe that either. He took Actos for seven years before being diagnosed with bladder cancer.

Nor was the jury buying it that awarded Terrence $9 billion dollars in the first Actos bladder cancer case.

But Takeda isn’t giving up hope that it can somehow convince the public (and the scores of other plaintiffs who filed 3,000 similar cases) that those were rare occurrences.

And that’s despite the fact that the FDA issued a warning about bladder cancer and Actos five years ago.

I mean, this drug has even been banned in France and Germany!

This latest research, however, appears to make the strongest case yet for not letting your doctor smooth talk you into starting up on Actos. Because it looks like that cancer risk is even higher than previously thought.

For example, researchers found that:

• The drug can up your risk of bladder cancer by a whopping 63 percent.
• That risk can get even higher when the drug is used longer than two years.
• The bladder cancer risk appears to fall square on the shoulders of Actos. In other words, that particular cancer risk is a “drug specific” effect, said the researchers.

By now, it should be glaringly obvious that Actos is a bad drug whose long-term use can significantly up your risk of bladder cancer. And if you think about it, that’s the only way this and other diabetes drugs are used — long term.

Actos does have one thing going for it, though– it’s dirt cheap. And since it’s been around for years, you can get a month’s supply for just a few bucks.

But do you want to know the real kicker?  Researchers in this new study compared Actos to other diabetes meds and found that the study participants who took Actos were more likely to have higher HbA1c levels.

That’s right. They didn’t even have control of their diabetes!

That’s Big Pharma in a nutshell for you. Here we have a diabetes drug that can hit your risk of bladder cancer out of the ballpark, yet isn’t even effective at lowering your A1c!

But as one doctor was quoted as saying, Actos is inexpensive so it “should not be pulled off the shelves.”

And that could be used as the poster-boy example of the kind of twisted logic that’s driving mainstream medicine today.

But you don’t have to fall for this Big Pharma ploy.

Because just because a drug is affordable doesn’t mean you can afford to take it.

Sources:

“Diabetes drug Actos raises bladder cancer risk” March 31, 2016 NewsMax, newsmax.com

“What do you need to know about Actos and bladder cancer?” Joe Graedon, March 31, 2016, The People’s Pharmacy, peoplespharmacy.com