A huge review of studies on pain relievers has found that a widely-used medicine may confer cardiovascular risks as serious as those found with Vioxx, an arthritis medicine that was withdrawn from the market two years ago.
Diclofenac, marketedas Voltaren, Cataflam, Solaraze and Arthrotec, an older non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), has been on the market for decades and is one of the most-widely prescribed anti-inflammatories in the world especially in Europe. At commonly prescribed doses, it was found to increase the risk of cardiovascular events primarily heart attack and sudden death by 40%.
The good news from the study is that there are alternatives. “European consumers would be better off switching [from diclofenac] to naproxen,” says David Graham, a safety official at the US Food and Drug Administration, who authored an editorial1 accompanying the published review. Naproxen was found to neither increase nor decrease cardiac risk.
Read the rest of this entry »
Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.
Tags: American Medical Association, arthritis, atherosclerosis, Australia, David Graham, David Henry, Europe, heart attack, heart disease, New South Wales, Newcastle Mater Hospital, pain, Patricia McGettigan, safety official, the Journal of the American Medical Association, University of Newcastle in New South Wales, US Food and Drug Administration, vioxx, Waratah
Entries (RSS)