Is this latest type 2 drug another pancreatic cancer risk?
Has the FDA just approved another type 2 diabetes med linked to pancreatic cancer?
Adlyxin is the latest entry in the class of diabetes treatments known as GLP-1 drugs — a gang that includes best sellers Tanzeum, Victoza and Trulicity.
Despite alarm bells having been sounded previously, and some new findings about the links between this killer cancer and GLP-1 meds, the FDA appears to have washed its hands of the entire matter.
And the chances are slim to none that doctors and patients will be told a word about it.
Although we keep hearing glowing reports about cancer rates going down, that’s not the case for pancreatic cancer. Actually, its numbers are steadily rising.
And there’s certainly no debate over the fact that it’s a killer.
So when a whole class of best-selling diabetes drugs is implicated in triggering the disease, you would think regulators would stop, look and listen.
Yeah, you would think.
But it appears that the FDA has dispensed with any such concerns — even while approving more and more of these kinds of meds.
The new one, Adlyxin, like the others I mentioned, is called a GLP-1 receptor agonist. These drugs aren’t insulin, but act like a natural hormone in your body that controls blood sugar.
And like the other three, Adlyxin comes with a host of warnings about pancreatitis. The label for it cautions about “inflammation of the pancreas that may be severe and lead to death.”
That’s certainly scary enough. But what researchers discovered three years ago might even be more frightening.
Back in the spring of 2013 a study published in the journal Diabetes should have been enough reason for the FDA to hit the brakes on these meds.
Researchers from UCLA and the University of Florida College of Medicine found abnormal cell growth in the pancreases autopsied from diabetics taking these kinds of medications (which are also called incretin drugs). They also found small “glandular tumors” all throughout the organs they examined.
And apparently these abnormal findings weren’t just because the people were diabetic, because no abnormal cell growth was found in diabetics who were not taking these meds.
Now, as you may have guessed, linking a drug prescribed for millions to pancreatic cancer should have set off a firestorm. But the FDA was standing by with its own tanker full of water.
First, the agency issued a “drug safety communication” saying it was conducting an investigation. By the next year, it was done and over.
Joining in with its counterpart, the European Medicines Agency, the FDA said that the risk of these drugs and pancreatic cancer are “inconsistent with the current data” — but not to worry, because both agencies will continue to be on the lookout.
And while the FDA may have done its best to have us look the other way, some new research done by drugmaker Novo Nordisk is telling us just the opposite.
In wrapping up its cardiac study on Victoza (another GLP-1 med), the head of the industry-sponsored research let it slip that there was a higher rate of pancreatic cancer found in the patients taking it. He called it the “fly in the ointment.”
Are you kidding me? Pancreatic cancer is being referred to as a fly in the ointment?
Look, over a year ago I told you that the Institute for Safe Medicine Practices found that compared to older type 2 treatments like metformin, your risk of pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer is 25 times higher when taking a GLP-1 drug.
And we haven’t been told anything to assure us this new one will be any safer.
Sources:
“FDA approves lixisenatide, brand name Adlyxin” John Gever, July 28, 2016, MedPage Today, medpagetoday.com
