Word: celebrex
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Vioxx is one in a new class of drugs called COX-2 inhibitors, which were designed to be safer for treating arthritis pain than over-the-counter remedies like aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen. Concerns have been raised about another member of the group, Pfizer's Bextra. The safety of Celebrex, the most popular of the COX-2 drugs, will be reviewed in the coming months...
...Percentage of those people who switched to Celebrex or Bextra, Pfizer drugs in the same class whose safety has also been questioned...
...recall also raised long-simmering doubts about the benefits of the whole class of COX-2 inhibitors. These so-called designer drugs, which include Celebrex and a newer drug called Bextra, were supposed to offer the pain-killing power of aspirin without the damage to the stomach lining. But they were a lot more expensive than over-the-counter pain-killers (prescriptions cost as much as $2 to $3 a day), and many doctors felt the drugs were being hyped far beyond their medical value. "These agents have been the subject of absolutely intensive, unrelenting marketing," Wofsy says. Even...
...none of the other COX-2 inhibitors have been tarred with Vioxx's brush. Pfizer's Celebrex has been studied the longest; some patients in three ongoing Celebrex trials have been followed for several years without any signs of cardiovascular effects. Bextra, also from Pfizer, hasn't been tested as long, but so far the data look good. Two more COX-2 inhibitors, Arcoxia (from Merck) and Prexige (from Novartis), are awaiting FDA approval. "Obviously, we now have to look more carefully at the other members of the class," says Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic...
...should you be taking Celebrex to prevent colon cancer? It's still too early to say. Clearly COX-2 is one of the factors in colon cancer. "But I don't think it's the exclusive answer," says Ray DuBois, director of cancer prevention at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tenn. "There are a lot of other components that need to be explored...