Avandia Concerns Shuffle Diabetes Market

- FDA News

12/06/2007 - Slightly less than half of all patients who have discontinued the use of GlaxoSmithKline’s anti-diabetes drug Avandia over cardiac safety concerns were switched to Takeda Pharmaceuticals’ Actos, according to a healthcare information company. Both products are in the glitazone drug class.

The remaining patients who discontinued Avandia (rosiglitazone maleate) were switched to either Merck’s dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor Januvia (sitagliptin), Amylin Pharmaceuticals/Eli Lilly’s injectable anti-diabetes drug Byetta (exenatide) or insulin, according to TNS Healthcare. The company measured prescription trends from July to September.

Although patient withdrawals from treatment with Avandia increased during the period, withdrawals from Actos (pioglitazone HCl) increased as well, yet at a lower rate.

Half of the prescribing changes for Avandia were switches to other drugs, 40 percent were changes in dosage with physicians switching from fixed-dose combinations of the product to Avandia alone and 10 percent were removals of Avandia from patients’ existing regimen.

While sales of Avandia have been declining, U.S. sales of Actos increased 24 percent to $1.4 billion for the six months ending Sept. 30, in part due to the safety concerns with Avandia, Takeda said.