Bextra Side Effects: Heart Attack and Stroke

Study Reveals Bextra Doubles Heart Attack Risk

Although not as persuasive as the study which prompted Vioxx's withdrawal from the market, a study presented in November 2004 showed that patients taking Bextra in drug trials were twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke.

Dr. Curt Furberg, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine, helped conduct the study and said, "Basically we showed that Bextra is no different than Vioxx, and Pfizer is trying to suppress that information." Though the study reorganized existing data from older studies instead of doing new drug trials, the outcome is nevertheless disturbing, since Bextra's manufacturer, Pfizer, insists that those older studies found no heart problems at all. A study of existing data showing increased heart attack and stroke risks associated with a drug, and then protests by the pharmaceutial company are reminiscent of events leading to the Vioxx recall.

"The magnitude of the signal with Bextra is even higher than what we saw in Vioxx," says Dr. Garret A. FitzGerald, a caridiologist at the University of Pennsylvania who conducted the latest study. He adds, "This is a time bomb waiting to go off." Dr. FitzGerald is one of the world's leading experts on COX-2 inhibitor drugs, a classification that applies to Bextra, as well as Vioxx and Celebrex. In previous studies, Dr. FitzGerald was among the first to explain how COX-2 drugs like Bextra could create heart trouble.

Bextra and Celebrex are COX-2 drugs used to treat arthritis pain, but unlike Vioxx, another COX-2 drug recently recalled, neither Bextra nor Celebrex has proved to be any safer on the stomach than older medicines like ibuprofen or naproxen. Furthermore, neither Bextra nor Celebrex has been shown to alleviate pain any better than older drugs. After the Vioxx recall, the US FDA was criticized for failing to require Vioxx's withdrawal years ago. Now with the new study results on Bextra, the COX-2 controversy continues.

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