In December, new data were unveiled showing a potential heart risk for Celebrex.
At some point a drug for even the most uncommon disease becomes every bit as appealing to drug companies as an untested potential heart treatment or impotence pill.
And 26 pages later, Lilly counters with an ad featuring a torso with the heart exposed and attacks three rival drugs by name, including Novartis' Mellaril and Serentil, for potential heart problems.
Research by Garret Fitzgerald at the University of Pennsylvania, who had a decade ago warned about the potential heart risks of the arthritis drugs Vioxx and Celebrex, seemed to show such an effect was possible.
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Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Eric Topol was one of the first to point out the potential heart risk of Merck 's (nyse: MRK - news - people ) withdrawn Vioxx and Pfizer 's (nyse: PFE - news - people ) Celebrex.
They enlisted one of their fellows to do a statistical analysis, and published a Sept. 2001 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association calling for an investigation into potential heart risks caused by Vioxx and Celebrex, a competing drug from Pfizer (nyse: PFE - news - people ).
So far, they are critical, seeing potential for heart risk in unapproved Cox-2 drugs developed by Novartis and Merck .
Public Citizen has been petitioning to get the drug off the market since 2002 based on the potential for heart harm.
He argues that because of the potential for heart attacks and other risks, including cases of heart failure and broken bones, Avandia should be yanked.
If the findings hold up, they could open a totally new approach to heart disease, with the potential to slash heart attacks far beyond the 30%-to-40% reduction seen with cholesterol-lowering drugs alone.
Meantime, leaders of the Framingham study say they are intrigued by digital's potential role in heart research.
WSJ: Heart Disease Study Aims to Chart Risk of Heart Attacks, Strokes in Real Time
But the Democrats and Republicans should take their potential danger to heart.
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On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration asked Novartis to pull its heavily advertised constipation drug, Zelnorm, after finding a potential link to heart problems.
The scientists said the effect was big enough to be a potential risk factor for heart disease.
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Our correspondent says Mr Chavez's death has created a potential vacuum at the heart of his political movement.
's (nyse: BAY - news - people ) Aleve and Roche 's Naprosyn, saying there was a potential increased risk for heart attack and stroke for patients on the drug.
In a perspective published online Monday night in The New England Journal of Medicine, Nissen lays out his case that drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall may cause potential risks to the heart that many patients don't appreciate--and that these risks should be spelled out in a clear, black-box warning for consumers.
There is no shortage of potential customers: The American Heart Association estimates that 65% of the population is overweight.
The catheter method could greatly broaden the potential market, since many heart patients are too sick to risk surgery.
Here's a deeper irony: The FDA had not only missed the opportunity to make a statement about a potential link between Avandia and heart attacks, even if only to dismiss it.
Meanwhile, the ballooning Puerto Rican population just 80 miles up the road has Orlando looking, politically speaking, more and more like South Florida -- a potential Democratic stronghold in the heart of central Florida's political battlefield.
In clinical trials these substances have killed germs and showed potential in preventing cancer and fighting heart disease.
On the near horizon are some "very encouraging potential treatments that get at the heart and core" of the disease.
Statins are among the safest drugs on the market, but in patients at very low risk of heart attack, their potential muscle- and liver-damaging side effects become more worrisome.
They have suspected for a while that the older survey methods were biased, and that the inflation thus produced was tolerated because it helped twang the heart-strings of potential donors.
"This development should enable us to explore the potential of new drugs and the treatment of heart rhythm disorders, " he said.
In September of 2002, Merck began a 23, 542-patient study called MEDAL that was specifically designed to examine the heart safety of Arcoxia, a potential Vioxx successor.
Like many of the numbers being tossed about in the stem-cell debate, this count is inflated by emotion: Langevin included all patients suffering from cancer, juvenile diabetes, heart disease and even arthritis as potential beneficiaries of the research.
Each donor has the potential to help nine people through donation of a heart, lungs, two kidneys, pancreas, liver and small bowel and two corneas.
And the factors which made Murray's victory so heart-tugging also made it a potential disaster the pressure upon Team GB athletes to deliver at these games is comical, and had Murray faltered against Federer twice in one month on another global stage, you can only imagine the brutal headlines.
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