What Do You Think of This Statement About Avandia?
Question by nochocolate: What do you think of this statement about Avandia?
CBS News – 43 minutes ago
(WebMD) There’s no urgent need for type 2 diabetes patients to stop taking Avandia, even if the drug really does increase the risk of heart attack, some medical experts caution.
Best answer:
Answer by Pahd
I think it is good advice.
If my patients ask, I am telling them to continue the avandia until they can speak with the doctor who gave them the prescription for the avandia. If they have had significant cardiovascular problems in the past, I am urging them to talk to their doctor ASAP, otherwise I advise them to make a regular appointment, or to speak with their prescribing doctor on the phone.
In other words, don’t stop taking the avandia without speaking to the doctor who gave it to you.
Answer by W W D
It’s a complicated world. If you’re not familiar with meta-analyses, it may seem that something sinister is going on, but this is pretty well business as usual in medicine, where real take-to-the-bank answers are hard to come by. Statistical trends often are misleading, and it will take considerable study looking specifically at that question to determine if rosiglitazone really does what it appears to in terms of cardiovascular risks.
You might want to think about this: medications for type II diabetes are usually studied and marketed with an eye to how well they control blood sugar, and blood pressure medications are usually studied and marketed according to how well they control hypertension. It is generally assumed that keeping these controlled will also control cardiovascular risk, but that assumption may very well not be true. The alternative is to keep them in phase III clinical trials for thirty or forty years to get more studies of that particular question, but most of us don’t want to wait that long for drugs to come on-line.
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