Glaxo’s Avandia Should Be Pulled, Doctors Say

GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Avandia was linked to heart attacks and other cardiovascular complications in two new studies that the authors say should prompt U.S. regulators to pull the diabetes drug from the market.

Almost 50,000 elderly Americans died, suffered strokes or developed heart failure after taking Avandia instead of a rival medicine since the Glaxo treatment was approved in 1999, according to a drug safety reviewer at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who conducted one study. A second study, from the scientists who first raised the alarm about Avandia, found one of every 52 patients taking the drug was harmed.