Avandia and Actos double women's fracture risk

North Carolina, United States, December 10: A new study found that taking popular class of oral drugs for type 2 diabetesdefine, such as GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia and Takeda's Actos, for a long period of time doubles the risk of bone fractures among women.

The controversial drugs, Avandia and Actos are both from a class of drugs known as thiazolidinediones or TZDs and carry strong warnings on their labels. Both drugs are used to control blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetesdefine, which is linked to obesity.

Past studies have already shown that the drugs seem to perk up fracture rates among women who use them, but the latest research is the first to quantify just how large that effect is.

Study co-author, Sonal Singh of North Carolina's Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., U.S., said, "This study shows that these agents double the risk of fractures in women with type 2 diabetes, who are already at higher risk before taking the therapy."

Singh and team at Wake Forest, along with researchers at University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, analysed the findings of ten past clinical studies lasting at least 12 months involving almost 14,000 people with type 2 diabetes.

Researchers compared the bone health of people who were on the drugs with that of others who were not and found that use of drugs (TZDs) for more than a year affected bone density in the spine and at the hip.

However, there is yet no proof that other drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes, such as metformin and sulfonylurea, cause an increased risk of fractures.

Strangely, use of Avandia and Actos significantly perked up the risk of fractures in females and not in males, study found. Scientists said more research is needed to find out why the sexes were affected differently.

Approximately 300,000 people with type 2 diabetes take popular oral drugs daily in Britain. Nearly 1 million Americans still take Avandia to keep their blood sugar in check.

The findings appear online in the Canadian Medical Association Journal this week.

Another past American study, published in the Nov. 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, found that older diabetic patients who take widely used diabetes drug, Avandia, may face a higher risk of developing congestive heart failure and death than those who take Actos.