Healthy Skepticism Library item: 716

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Reuters .
Aleve Warnings May Be Exaggerated
The Wall Street Journal 2004 Dec 23

Full text:

Warnings that taking Bayer AG’s Aleve painkiller increases heart risks may have been exaggerated, according to some medical experts, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned earlier this week of heart risks connected to the over-the-counter painkiller naproxen, which is sold as a generic and under several brand names, including Aleve.

The risk that the drug could cause heart attacks was “not really” statistically significant, John Breitner, a researcher at the University of Washington, Seattle, who led the study comparing Aleve, Pfizer Inc.‘s Celebrex and a placebo in the prevention of Alzheimer’s, told the newspaper.

Breitner added that only two or three patients who took either naproxen or the placebo died from a heart attack and none of them died from a stroke, according to the Journal.

A spokesman for Bayer Healthcare told Reuters the company had no comment on the study because “we have not yet seen the final data to make our evaluation.”

The study was not halted because of any concerns over increased heart risks, the Journal said.

In fact, the paper reported that the study was halted because the patients, concerned especially about news of other drugs being linked to heart problems, began to refuse taking their medicine, according to Susan Molchan, director of the Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials program at the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Aging.