I posted this as well over at Diabetes Notes, but I think it is big enough news that you will excuse the duplication.
Ok, it is official… Avandia will stay on the market.  The FDA voted an overwhelming yes to keeping the drug on the shelves.  They stated that they are recommending that there be warning labels for the elder population and high risk cardiac patients. 
And as you can guess, this is getting a bag of mixed emotions.  Will this stop the 1000’s of lawsuits that are currently existing due to Avandia’s heart implications?  I think not.  But it will give …read more

Funny, I just wrote about this on Diabetes Notes, but since everyone and their mother sent me the link, I will share it on A Hearty Life as well. The popular type 2 diabetic drug Avandia has now been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and possibly death.
More than 6 million people worldwide have taken the drug sold by London-based GlaxoSmithKline PLC since it came on the market eight years ago. Pooled results of dozens of studies revealed a 43 percent higher risk of heart attack, according to the review published by the New England Journal …read more

More evidence that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) –COX-2 inhibitors*, ibuprofen, naproxen–may increase the risk of heart attacks. A Finnish case-control study comparing heart attack patients with matched control subjects found that “current use of any type of NSAID was associated with 40 percent increased risk of having a heart attack.”
Conflicting evidence abounds when it comes to the safety of NSAID pain relievers as they pertain to heart health. The best way to settle the issue would be to conduct a clinical trial (the gold standard of epidemiologic studies) that compares study participants who are given NSAIDs to those given …read more

The most common risk factors for cardiovascular disease are age, family history, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, inactivity, poor diet, weight, and other health problems. Another risk factor appears to be the pain killer Vioxx.
On Monday, closing arguments were made in one of almost 10,000 trials. The current trial involved two men who suffered heart attacks after taking Vioxx. Merck argues that the two men already had many of the risk factors that predisposed them to heart attacks. The plaintiffs counter that Merck knew for many years Vioxx was linked to heart attacks and strokes and …read more