The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is conducting a safety review of two well-known HIV drugs, abacavir and didanosine, because European researchers reported the drugs may lead to an increase in heart attack risk for the patient taking them.
Long-term cardiovascular effects are a concern for people with HIV who have taken these drugs, but actual the risk of having a heart attack when using these drugs varies with whether a patient already has underlying risk for heart attack.
"FDA continues to evaluate the overall risks and benefits of abacavir and didanosine. This evaluation may result in the need to revise labeling for the products. Until this evaluation is complete, health-care providers should evaluate the potential risks and benefits of each HIV-1 antiretroviral drug their patients are taking, including abacavir and didanosine," the agency said in a statement.
In the study, Lundgren's team collected data on 33,347 HIV patients who participated in the Data Collection on Adverse Events of Anti-HIV Drugs study (D:A:D) and found that commonly used drugs called nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors such as zidovudine, stavudine or lamivudine had no association with an increased risk for heart attack, but the nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors abacavir and didanosine were associated with an increased rate of heart attack.
For patients who stop using these drugs, their risk for a heart attack will substantially decrease within six months.
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