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WFU medical-school researchers warn of health risks from drug
Treatment often used daily by patients with pulmonary disease
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Published: October 1, 2008
The Wake Forest University School of Medicine reported recently that use of the most commonly prescribed once-a-day treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for more than a month carries a significant health risk.
That includes increasing the risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack or stroke by more than 50 percent.
The medical school said that Dr. Sonal Singh and Dr. Curt Furberg, along with Yoon Loke of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, conducted a meta-analysis of 17 double-blind, random trials involving a total of 14,783 patients who have the disease. Participants received treatment with inhaled anticholinergics, another form of active therapy, or a placebo inhaler.
The results appeared in the latest issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Inhaled anticholinergics are a class of drugs that relax the airways and prevent them from getting narrower, making it easier to breathe. They also protect the airways from spasms that can suddenly cause the airway to become narrower. The two most-commonly used inhalers from the anticholinergic class are Spiriva, marketed by Pfizer, and Boehringer Ingelheim's Atrovent.
Inhaled tiotropium is indicated for the long-term, once-daily maintenance treatment of symptoms associated with the disease and is the most widely used drug in treatment. More than 8 million patients worldwide have used inhaled tiotropium since its approval.
"A regulatory reassessment of the cardiovascular safety concerns with this class of inhalers in patients with COPD is urgently needed," Singh said.
None of the authors received any money from pharmaceutical companies for this work nor reported any conflicts of interest.
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