People with diabetes have too much sugar in their blood, so anything that lowers blood sugar is helpful, right? Not necessarily, especially if it’s the popular drug Avandia (rosiglitazone).

A recent meta-analysis of numerous clinical trials found a 43 percent increase in the risk of heart attack among people with Type 2 diabetes taking this drug. In one 5,000-patient study, those taking Avandia had 66 percent more heart attacks, 39 percent more strokes, and 20 percent higher cardiovascular mortality.

Not surprisingly, given its 37 percent market share for oral glycemic-control drugs, Avandia’s manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, “strongly disagrees” with this research. Also under fire is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has issued a safety alert referring people taking Avandia to their physicians for advice.

“Rosiglitazone represents a major failure of the drug-use and drug-approval processes in the United States,” say Bruce M. Pstay, MD, PhD, and Curt D. Furberg, MD, PhD, who have called for stronger drug regulation by FDA. In June, Congress began hearings on this agency’s role in regulating drugs.

Diet and exercise can be as useful as drugs for Type 2 diabetes. Ten years ago researchers in the Diabetes Prevention Program at the Washington (DC) Hospital Center compared these lifestyle changes with another diabetes drug, metformin.

Although they expected the drug would be “the way to go,” investigators discovered that lifestyle changes were “more effective” than the drug was. [source: Taste for Life]