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Trenton, New Jersey: Vioxx users in the study that led to the painkiller being pulled from the market were not at increased risk of heart attack or stroke in the year after stopping the drug, Merck & Co said. Merck said data from a "preliminary safety analysis" of an additional year of patient follow-up, part of the study's original plan, did not show a statistically significant difference in the rate of heart attacks and strokes among patients who had been on Vioxx and those who had taken a dummy pill. That means the differences over that year could have been due to chance. However, there was a higher rate of complications, mainly strokes, among those taking Vioxx over all four years covered in the new data: the original three years of the study and the follow-up year after patients were taken off the medicine.
Merck general counsel Kenneth Frazier said the results will not change Merck's strategy of fighting, one by one, the many lawsuits filed by former Vioxx users and their families alleging the one-time blockbuster arthritis drug caused heart attacks, strokes and deaths. "We believe that the data don't provide for a claim for a patient who had an event after they stopped taking their medicine," Frazier told reporters. The Whitehouse Station-based pharmaceutical company released the information after the stock market closed on Thursday Merck faces about 10,000 lawsuits over Vioxx, including numerous potential class-action suits, and has lost half of the six cases to come to trial so far.
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