In my last post I raised the possibility that Steve Nissen, a highly influential cardiologist who has been an outspoken critic of industry influence in medicine, might have his own conflict of interest (COI) problem. In response, another cardiologist, James Stein, said that my post was unfair in its treatment of Nissen and failed to…
Diet Drug Study Crashes And Burns In The Wake Of Leaked Results
May 12, 2015 by Leave a Comment
The ill-fated Light trial, which was supposed to examine the cardiovascular outcomes of the weight loss drug Contrave, a combination of naltrexone and bupropion marketed by Orexigen and Takeda, came to a spectacular halt today. The action was probably inevitable given the extreme controversy generated earlier this year when it became known that Orexigen had widely disseminated results from an early…
With One Big Exception FDA Reviewers Back More Benign View Of Avandia Trial
June 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The FDA today released a 538-page briefing document for an advisory panel meeting on Wednesday and Thursday that will reassess a key clinical trial and reconsider the fate of the now-tarnished former blockbuster diabetes drug rosiglitazone (Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline). (Click here for the FDA documents.) As reported last week, the re-adjudication of the RECORD safety trial performed…
This Week In Medicine: Stop Exercising and Eat Chocolate!
May 31, 2012 by 5 Comments
It’s been a terrific few days of medical news for lazy people and chocoholics. First, a study in PLoS One provided ammunition to the exercise-averse crowd by claiming that exercise can actually be bad for some healthy people. As an added bonus, a story about the study was carried on the front page of the…
CT Angiography Found Less Helpful in Patients With High Calcium Scores
January 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Computed tomography angiography (CTA) has been proposed as a less invasive method to exclude obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD), but no consensus has been achieved about its clinical role in different patient subsets. Now a new report published in JACC from the CORE-64 (Coronary Artery Evaluation Using 64-Row Multidetector Computed Tomography Angiography) study shows that CTA may not…
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