COMMENTARY | Have you ever actually listened to those side effect warnings at the end of drug commercials? Have you ever actually read the side effect and drug interaction pamphlets that the pharmacist stuffs in the bag with your medications? You should.
As a type 2 diabetic on oral medication, I have always been extremely vigilant with checking side effects and interactions on any drug prescribed to me or anyone in the family. What a lot of people, myself included, don’t realize, is that the drugs are continuously being tested, and new side effects are discovered even after the drug is approved by the FDA.
This fact was brought to light for me recently while watching the news and the drug ACTOS, a diabetes drug, was mentioned. According to an FDA interim review of an ongoing epidemiological study, patients taking ACTOS for more than a year may have an increased risk of bladder cancer — a 40 percent greater risk according to a group called ActosCancer.com.
This is not the first time at the rodeo for diabetes medications. Avandia was restricted in the U.S. last year because of a possible increased risk of heart attack. The not so funny joke? According to medpagetoday.com, part of the restriction on Avandia is this: Avandia is only to be used in patients who have failed therapy with other medications, such as ACTOS. Is one to expect their Doctor to prescribe the heart attack pill now because they no longer want to take the cancer pill?
The FDA puts a new warning on ACTOS just days after it was banned in Germany and France for the same findings. Are the American people less important than citizens of other countries, or is it just that there aren’t enough conclusive tests done yet to satisfy the FDA, our “watchdogs”, to actually pull it from the shelves?
The process for a drug to garner FDA approval is a complex one to be sure, but is it enough? The findings that brought about this new revelation state that you only have to be taking ACTOS for one year to be in the increased risk category. Is that to say that the drug wasn’t tested for more than a year before approval? Though I couldn’t ascertain when the application was made, Actos was approved by the FDA on July 15, 1999. However long they tested it, it wasn’t long enough apparently.
And here is my favorite statistic of all: According to abcnews.com, “Patients with the longest exposure to and the highest cumulative dose of the drug were at greater risk.” I’ve been at the maximum dosage for nearly 10 years.