New Diabetes Drug Warning

Natalie Smith

KINE 1120

Mrs. Long

July 18, 2009

New Diabetes Drug Warning

Dr. Gupta

I saw a couple of videos of Dr. Gupta and out all of them I found this one to be a little bit more interesting, I believe that its because I have relatives that have diabetes and therefore I am concerned for their health. Dr. Gupta was talking about one of the very common antibiotic prescribed to diabetics which is called, Avandia. He said that those antibiotics have been on 'recall' since the year of 2007, but doctors still kept prescribing them and the elderly kept taking them. To be up to date as of this year, 2010, there has been more people that are getting severely effected because of Avandia. According to Dr. Gupta and a large study, they came up with a small graph showing the percentages increase in the problems that this antibiotic is causing. Of all the elderly that are taking Avandia, there is a 27% increase risk of a stroke, 25% increase of heart failure, and 14% increase in risk of death. Also many people were wondering if those failures were because of the antibiotics or because of the diabetes itself. But they switched some elderly from Avandia to other antibiotics and they did notice a big difference which they came up with another graph showing how it decreased, there was more than 500 hundred less heart attacks a year, and more than 300 hundred less heart failures in a year. Therefore if you base yourself upon those results, you are be able to realize that Avandia is a harmful antibiotic that should be banned from all markets.