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Avandia, other drugs are bitter pills for diabetics, suits say.

Article Excerpt
An epidemic of Type 2 diabetes is putting more people at risk of the disease's complications--heart attacks and damage to other organs among them. But in an ironic twist, the drugs prescribed to treat diabetes may themselves cause the serious or fatal conditions diabetics are seeking to avoid.

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About 23 million Americans have Type 2 diabetes, which can be managed with drugs. Producing these pharmaceuticals is a multibillion-dollar industry. Plaintiffs in litigation involving several of the drugs brought to market since the late 1990s allege that drug companies knew of serious risks but hid study results in order to profit from their products' widespread use.

"If the number-one reason to treat diabetes is to lower the risk of heart attacks and stroke, and you give a drug that raises that risk, you completely dilute the treatment," said John Boundras of Houston, whose firm represents hundreds of plaintiffs who took the diabetes drug Avandia and suffered cardiovascular problems.

"You can have a diabetic who, yes, has a higher risk of heart attack, but giving him Avandia is throwing kerosene on a fire. The problem is diabetics aren't getting another therapy that would actually help them--another drug that would work to lower blood sugar and lower heart risks. With Avandia, [manufacturer] GlaxoSmithKline is putting patients farther out on the limb than they need to be."

Type 2 diabetes begins when the body loses the ability to use insulin, a hormone released by the pancreas that converts glucose into...

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