english.prescrire.org > Spotlight > Archives : 2008 > Type 2 diabetes: pioglitazone still on the market despite its unfavourable risk-benefit balance

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Type 2 diabetes: pioglitazone still on the market despite its unfavourable risk-benefit balance

Although it offers no benefits to diabetic patients and can have sometimes severe adverse effects, pioglitazone is still on the market, and at a high price.

The first-line treatment for reducing morbidity and mortality in patients suffering from type 2 diabetes is an oral antidiabetic drug such as metformin or glibenclamide.

Since the commercialisation of the glitazone family of antidiabetic drugs, Prescrire has repeatedly pointed out the lack of proven benefits for patients and underlined their sometimes severe adverse effects, in particular bone fractures, cardiac failure, hypoglycaemia, oedema.

The French committee that assesses the medical benefits of new drugs and provides recommendations on drug reimbursement (La Commission française de la transparence), which has reviewed the therapeutic value of pioglitazone, has concluded that pioglitazone offers no improved medical service.

Despite all these factors, pioglitazone is still being marketed and at a high price. Each day, patients taking pioglitazone remain exposed to potentially severe adverse effects from a drug which offers no clinical benefit.

When will the French health authorities make up their minds to act in patients’ best interests by quite simply demanding the withdrawal of pioglitazone from the market?

©Prescrire December 2008

Source: "Pioglitazone ASMR à la baisse, mais toujours là" Rev Prescrire 2008; 28 (301) 818.

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