RespiteMatch.com Health Blog

By Val Brickates Kennedy, MarketWatch
Last Update: 11:09 AM ET Mar 1, 2006

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — A group of researchers in New Zealand said Tuesday that a reanalysis of older studies conducted on Pfizer’s pain reliever Celebrex show the drug can raise the risk of suffering a heart attack.
Researchers from New Zealand’s Medical Research Institute in Wellington said that the analysis, which used data from past Celebrex clinical trials, showed the drug could nearly double the risk of heart attack in patients, according to local reports.
The analysis utilized data from six studies on Celebrex involving 12,780 users. The results were published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, according to the Associated Press.
Calls to Pfizer were not immediately returned.
Celebrex belongs to a class of pain killers called Cox-2 inhibitors. Last year, a panel of experts for the Food and Drug Administration determined that two Cox-2 inhibitors, Merck’s (MRK : Merck & Co., Inc.
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MRK34.92, +0.06, +0.2%) Vioxx and Pfizer’s (PFE : Pfizer Inc
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PFE26.09, -0.10, -0.4%) Bextra, could increase the risk of cardiovascular problems in certain patients. The FDA panel, however, also ruled that Celebrex did not pose any significant risk.
Merck pulled Vioxx from the market in late 2004 after a clinical study showed it could increase the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke when used for 18 months or longer. Pfizer withdrew Bextra last spring after the FDA panel’s ruling.
Pfizer has said it expects 2006 sales of Celebrex to be in excess of $2 billion.