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"Hundreds Dead" in Failed Diabetes Drug Trial
David Gutierrez
Natural News
Monday, Dec 15, 2008
The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Heart, Lung
and Blood Institute has announced the early cancellation of one
part of a major diabetes and cardiovascular disease study after
discovering that patients undergoing that treatment were more
likely to die from heart attacks and strokes.
The Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD)
study included 10,251 adults with Type 2 diabetes who were considered
to be at especially high risk of heart attacks and strokes. One
of the treatments in the study involved using combinations of
FDA-approved diabetes drugs to aggressively lower participants'
blood sugar to levels as close to normal as possible.
"Of these, 257 in the intensive treatment group have died,
compared with 203 within the standard treatment group," the
NIH announced. At the time of the experiment's cancellation, patients
had been undergoing treatment for an average of four years.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
The NIH said that it does not know what caused the increased
risk of death among patients undergoing intensive treatment, but
it does not believe that the risk came from any individual drug
or combination of drugs. Rather, there appears to be some negative
effect on the body from so aggressively lowering blood sugar levels.
"This presents a real dilemma to patients and their physicians,"
said Richard Kahn, chief scientific and medical officer for the
American Diabetes Association. "How intensive should treatment
be? We just don't know."
Previously, health experts have believed that the closer to normal
a diabetic's blood sugar can be lowered, the better. The NIH findings
have offered a major challenge to that conventional wisdom.
Approximately 21 million people in the United States suffer from
Type 2 diabetes, and the numbers increase every year. The elevated
blood sugar that is characteristic of the disease is well-established
to lead to a host of other health problems, including an elevated
risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack and stroke.
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