[acb-diabetics] drugs don't help diaaabetics with heart problems

[Patricia LaFrance-Wolf]

Click here to find out more! frame end

 

A decade ago, the federal government launched the three-part study to see
whether intensely lowering blood sugar, blood pressure, or fats in the blood
would

reduce heart attacks and strokes in diabetics. The first piece of the study
-- about blood sugar -- was stopped two years ago, when researchers saw more

instead of less risk with that approach. Now, the other two parts of the
study are in.

 

What should diabetics do? Focus on healthy diets and lifestyles, and take
tried-and-true medicines that doctors recommend now to control health risks,
said

several experts.

 

The studies were presented at an American College of Cardiology conference
and published on the internet by the New England Journal of Medicine.

 

They involve people with Type 2 diabetes -- the most common form and the one
rising because of the obesity epidemic. Diabetics have more than double the

risk of dying of heart attacks or strokes than people without the disease.

 

For the blood-fat study, researchers led by Columbia University's Dr. Henry
Ginsburg recruited more than 5,500 diabetics who also had another health
risk,

such as high blood pressure or cholesterol.

 

All were given a statin -- cholesterol-lowering pills sold as Lipitor and
Zocor that have long been known to save lives. Half also were given Abbott
Laboratories'

blockbuster drug, TriCor, the rest got dummy pills. TriCor is a fibrate, a
drug that lowers blood fats called triglycerides while boosting "good"
cholesterol.

 

Nearly five years later, the groups had similar rates of heart attacks and
strokes, although people with very high blood fats seemed to benefit from
TriCor.

There also were signs of a gender difference -- TriCor seemed to help men
but appeared to possibly harm women, by raising the chance they would suffer

a heart problem compared to women taking dummy pills.

 

"It's hard to know what to make of these trends," said Dr. Jorge Plutzky,
preventive cardiology chief at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA.
He

had no role in the study and has consulted for a variety of drug makers, as
have many of the researchers involved in the work.

 

The blood-pressure part of the study was led by Dr. William Cushman,
preventive medicine chief at Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Memphis, TN.
About

4,700 diabetics were treated with various medicines to keep their systolic
blood pressure -- the top number -- either below 140 or below 120. The
intense

treatment did not reduce the number of heart attacks, although it prevented
more strokes, a less common problem. Side effects were greater with the
intense

treatment. However, people should not stop taking any medicine without
checking with their doctors first, experts said.

 

"In no way do these studies mean that patients do not need to make sure
their blood pressure, glucose or lipid levels are under good control,"
Plutzky said.

 

An Abbott vice president, Dr. Eugene Sun, said the results of the
fat-lowering study were "not surprising given that two-thirds of patients in
the trial

would not be treated with fibrates under current guidelines."

 

The studies were presented March 14, 2010, at an American College of
Cardiology conference and published on the Internet by the New England
Journal of Medicine. 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.acb.org/pipermail/acb-diabetics/attachments/20100406/24b9e2bc/attachment.htm>