New research shows ACTOS is associated with a 38 percent lower risk of he...( Amsterdam The Netherlands Sept. 19 2...),Health

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Sept. 19, 2007 -- New research, including two studies presented this week at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), further support the cardiovascular safety of ACTOS (pioglitazone HCI) and its benefits regarding improved blood glucose and blood lipid levels for patients with type 2 diabetes. The unique outcomes, including some clinical practice results, reinforce the consistency of pioglitazone data and underscore that ACTOS has different effects from the other thiazolidinedione rosiglitazone due to differences in molecular structure.

New research [1] presented at EASD has shown that therapies which include pioglitazone are associated with significant reductions in the risk of stroke or myocardial infarction (MI) compared to non-thiazolidinedione therapies. This retrospective analysis of case records from a large managed care database of diabetes patients have shown that the adjusted relative risk of stroke for the pioglitazone group was 20 percent lower than the group not receiving pioglitazone. Likewise, the risk of heart attack over the study period was 38 percent lower in patients receiving pioglitazone than in those taking an anti-diabetes drug regimen that did not include pioglitazone. John Betteridge, Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism at University College, London said: The results of this analysis are very welcome and support the findings from the PROactive study of pioglitazone for secondary prevention of vascular events which showed a reduction in stroke and heart attack in this high risk population.

In addition, the GLAI study [2] , also presented at EASD, further reflects the cardioprotective strength of pioglitazone. A new analysis of data from the first three months of this six-month head-to-head study of pioglitazone and rosiglitazone, in which the endpoint was the change in serum lipids, demonstrated that initial treatment with a starting dos
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