| In order for a new idea, concept or method to gain popularity, the established idea, concept or method must lose its popularity. In this case, oral medications for type 2 diabetics are the established method losing their popularity. An increasing number of type 2 diabetics are unwilling to take oral medications because of the increasing number of serious side effects and the availability of alternatives. In an October 2002 Diabetes Health article titled: Use of Alternative Medicine High in People With Type 2 Diabetes it states that "Forty percent of those using complementary and alternative medicine indicate that they do so to prevent complications."
Type 2 diabetics are becoming increasingly concerned about complications because of stories like the following: In February of 2007, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) posted an announcement on the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) website about a letter they wrote to doctors explaining how certain, commonly used diabetes drugs can significantly increase the risk of bone fractures in women. And the above incident is only one of a number of significant cases. In November of 2007, European and U.S. diabetologists called for greater caution in prescribing oral diabetes pills like Avandia which has been linked to a disturbing increase in heart attack risk.
This warning by the world's two leading diabetes organizations came two weeks after the USFDA recommended black box warnings for Avandia. The USFDA requires a drug to carry a black box warning if the drug has an above average occurrence of serious or even life-threatening side-effects. This chain of recent events concerning widely used diabetes drugs is very alarming to many diabetics because they are eerily reminiscent of what happened to a very popular diabetes drug not long ago. In 1998, warnings about using the widely prescribed drug Rezulin started appearing from the manufacturer and by 2000, Parke-Davis voluntarily pulled their drug off the market because of an alarming number of very serious side-effects including death. And, of further concern to diabetics is the fact that the drugs now receiving usage warnings are in the same drug class as Rezulin. |
|