Diabetes drugs double women’s fracture risk
LONDON (Reuters) - Long-term use of GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia and Takeda’s Actos doubles the risk of bone fractures in women with type 2 diabetes, according to a study released on Wednesday.
Scientists already knew the two thiazolidinedione (TZD) drugs for diabetes were associated with fractures, but the magnitude of the risk had not been evaluated.
“This study shows that these agents double the risk of fractures in women with type 2 diabetes, who are already at higher risk before taking the therapy,” said Sonal Singh of North Carolina’s Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Singh and colleagues at Wake Forest, working with researchers at Britain’s University of East Anglia, based their findings on a pooled analysis of 10 previous clinical studies lasting at least a year involving 14,000 patients.
They concluded that if TZDs were used by diabetic women aged around 70 for a year, one additional fracture would occur among every 21 women. Among younger women, around age 56, use of the drugs would lead to one extra fracture for every 55 women.
The results may add to concerns about the TZD class of drugs, which are already linked to adverse cardiovascular side effects.
Both Avandia, known generically as rosiglitazone, and Actos, or pioglitazone, raise the risks of heart failure and carry strong warnings on their labels.
Avandia has also been linked to heart attack risk, and its sales have plunged since May 2007, hitting Glaxo sales and profits.
Researchers said the underlying cause of the sex-specific effect of TZDs on fractures was unclear, but they suggested the drugs may cause the problem by replacing bone marrow with fat cells.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler, editing by Will Waterman)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Related Posts:
LONDON (Reuters) - New international guidelines from two medical societies on treating people with type 2 diabetes no longer recommend the use of GlaxoSmithKline’s drug Avandia. A revision to guidelines first issued in 2006 by the European Association for the Study of Diabetes and the American Diabetes Association states that Takeda’s Actos may be considered, but
Full Post: New Europe, U.S. diabetes guidelines drop Avandia
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - Older diabetics who took GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia to control their blood sugar had a higher risk of death and heart failure while on the drug than those who took Takeda Pharmaceutical’s Actos, a drug in the same class, U.S. researchers said on Monday. They said the head-to-head comparison confirms prior analyses finding
Full Post: Safety risks higher with Avandia than Actos: study
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Anne Harding NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - If the US health care system “started to take osteoporosis seriously,” it could slash the number of Americans who suffer hip fractures by at least 25 percent, according to one of the authors of a new report on managing the brittle bone disease. Dr. Richard Dell, an orthopaedic surgeon
Full Post: Aggressive bone care could prevent hip fractures
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An elderly person who has fractured their femur - the large thigh bone that connects the leg to the hip - may want to have surgery sooner rather than later, according to a study linking longer times to surgery to a somewhat increased risk of post-surgery complications. Dr. Rudiger Smektala from
Full Post: Delayed surgery may affect fracture recovery
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Certain ethnic groups and women with lower socioeconomic status are at increased risk of developing diabetes while pregnant, research shows. Thirty percent of women who develop “gestational diabetes” will develop type 2 diabetes within the next 7 to 10 years, Dr. Hidde P. van der Ploeg of the University of Sydney,
Full Post: Risk of diabetes in pregnancy higher in some women