Friday, July 13, 2007
A friend forwarded to me a recent newspaper article titled "Diabetes Drug Side Effect Reports Triple" and was extremely worried. Sure sounds scary, doesn't it? Fortunately, things are not as bad as it sounds from this headline. It's a phenomenon called "stimulated reporting,&qu...
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Not everyone who has had issues with avandia is "an obese middle-aged patient with diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, severe heart disease, and who's still a smoker, and who also has a strong family history of heart disease"
I don't fit any of those categories other than I have diabetes. I took avandia for 3 years and experienced severe and extended d-fib. My Dr. prescribed a beta-blocker, but the episodes continued in both duration and intensity. However, it was immediately alleviated when I cut out avandia and I have had no other issues with d-fib since.
There are real people (not just the stereo-typical diabetic you portrayed) who have had real issues with avandia. Many of those reports will never be heard and are likely buried in a file somewhere as a mis-diagnosis or ?If you have had a side effect while on Avandia, I would encourage you to check with your physician about whether he/she has reported it to either the manufacturer, or to the FDA. If not, it should be reported -- and of course, if it's reported now, it would become another example of "stimulated reporting."
And I agree with you, that there are real people with real problems with Avandia (and with every other drug) whose problems are not brought to the attention of the manufacturer and Health Authorities such as the FDA. This is another well-known issue with the monitoring of adverse events: it's widely assumed that only about 10% of adverse events are reported.