U.S.: Controversial diabetes drug harms heart

Video: FDA cites diabetes drug’s heart risk

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   >> lester holt covering it.

   >>> wi turn to troubling news about a widely used diabetes medicine. confidential fda studies are confidential no more recommend that the drug avandia be removed from the market because of a link to heart attacks and failure. nancy snyderman is here with us in vancouver. nancy, this controversy is not new.

   >> it's not new, and trouble has been bubbling around avandia for quite sometime today. the senate finance committee made news because it issued a letter critical of the medicati medication, glaxco smith klein and the fda . the fda has acknowledged 83,000 cases of heart attacks for patients on this medication between 1999 and 2007 . they have studied over 250,000 internal documents and has concluded that the company and the fda have delayed in taking action, that action to remove it it from the market. gsk, however, maintains that this medication has a role, should be on the market, and is indeed needed to control blood sugar in so many diabetic patients, brian.

   >> it's one thing to say this. the natural question is if you're on it, know someone who is, what should they do?

   >> that's where the water is muddied right now. this senate letter was as much an indictment of the fda as avandia . there are other medications out there, but it may not be enough to ask your doctor. a lot of doctors will be confused, too, and not having the answers and not having clear alternatives really goes to the core of the problem, that after all these reports and years, why don't we have more definitive news to give patients?

   >> nancy snyderman with what we know tonight.

   >>> in washington thousands of conservatives wrapping up a three-day meeting

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