December 7, 2004
A study finds Celebrex is safer than Vioxx. But beyond that, there's debate among medical researchers about what the study reveals.
The study conducted by University of Pennsylvania researchers found that Celebrex does not have the same heart attack risk as Vioxx, a cox-2 drug pulled from shelves in September after a study revealed patients who took the drug for more than 18 months doubled their risk of heart attacks and stroke.
"Vioxx had about a threefold greater risk of heart attacks,'' said Dr. Stephen Kimmel, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology and lead author of the study. ``What that implies is that all cox-2 inhibitors may not be the same."
So does that mean Celebrex is safe? Not necessarily. Two Boston doctors say physicians should prescribe cox-2 inhibitors only as a last resort in patients who are at risk for heart attacks.
"We do not really know what triggered the increased heart attack risk in patients. We felt that we cannot exclude that there is a possibility of a cox-2 class effect," said Dr. Axel Finckh, a rheumatology researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital who co-wrote an editorial that accompanied the study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study was funded by the makers of both drugs, Pfizer and Merck, and the federal government. Researchers surveyed 1,718 patients in the five-county Philadelphia area who had heart attacks and were treated at one of 36 hospitals, and a comparison group of 6,800 people.
The researchers found that the chances of having a heart attack were 2.72 times greater in Vioxx users than in Celebrex users. But they also found that patients using either drug were not at a significantly greater risk of having a heart attack than those who did not use either drug.
Celebrex users had a lower risk of a heart attack than people who didn't take either drug, but the researchers said could have happened by chance.
