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Diabetics At Higher Risk For Fractures

Posted on: Tuesday, 29 April 2008, 12:00 CDT

Diabetics who use a type of medicine that increases insulin sensitivity are at a higher risk of fractures, according to a study in the current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Researchers of Boston University and Switzerland examined 1,020 patients who had fractures matched with 3,728 people who did not have the problem. Diabetics who used GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia and Japanese drugmaker Takeda's Actos for a year or more were two- to three-times as likely to suffer a leg or arm fracture than thoses not on those drugs.

The two drugs are part of a class of medications known as thiazolidinediones, or TZDs, which are used, usually in with other medicines, to treat type 2 diabetes. Both pills are taken orally.

Last year, Steven Nissen and a colleague at the Cleveland Clinic reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that Avandia significantly increased the risk of heart attacks and death from cardiovascular problems. Sales of the drug plummeted since the Nissen study was published. Actos has been less affected.

The fracture study of Avandia and Actos found that the risk was small after short-term use of less than a year, but increased over time and was highest for those who used the medications for two or more years.

The authors concluded that their study provided evidence of the association between the TZDs and factures "particularly of the hip and wrist. . . No such effect was seen for other antidiabetic drugs in this study.

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Archives of Internal Medicine

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

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