Glaxo Gets Some Good News

The class of diabetes drugs that includes GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK Quote) Avandia doesn't increase the risk of death or heart-failure hospitalizations compared with other medications, a new study says.

The report, published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, adds another element to the controversy over Avandia and drugs like it, called thiazolidinediones, or TZDs.

Last month, a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine said people who used Avandia had a 43% greater possibility of heart attacks than people taking other diabetes medications.

The NEJM article was based on compiling information from many clinical trials, and the authors admitted that such research has limitations. The cardiology journal report is based on a review of medical records of Veterans' Administration patients, and the authors concede that their work has limitations, too.

The Food and Drug Administration has convened a panel of outside medical advisers, who will meet in late July to assess the safety of TZDs. This class also includes Actos from Japan's Takeda.

TZDs are called insulin sensitizers because they enable the body to better process insulin, the hormone that converts sugar into energy.

In the latest study, members of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the Department of Veterans' Affairs found no statistical difference in death rates or heart-failure hospitalization rates between the users of TZDs and those who didn't use insulin-sensitizers. Heart failure is the weakening of the heart's pumping ability.