[muawiyah]

Determining cause and effect with Avandia is quite difficult. Many physicians (probably almost all of them) thought it a good idea to prescribe this drug to their diabetic patients who used both Glipizide and Glucophage ~ the constituent parts of Avandia ~ to reduce the effort they had to make to deal with their diabetes.

Those who didn't have heart trouble were probably not administered Avandia if they had no other problems.

FDA had to back that out of the equation to come up with this recent finding.

My own thoughts are that simply taking Glucophage and Glipizide at the same time is probably not that neat an idea anyway. Both drugs contain ingredients that "talk to the nucleus", and that's gotta' have some unknown effects, plus the Glucophage works, in part, by blocking the passage of both starch and B-12 across the membranes in the small intestine. It probably screws around with other stuff anyway.

I expect the very next FDA report on these two drugs is going to be to avoid using them simultaneously.

[neverdem]

Many physicians (probably almost all of them) thought it a good idea to prescribe this drug to their diabetic patients who used both Glipizide and Glucophage ~ the constituent parts of Avandia...

That's not so.

Approximately 10 years ago, the thiazolidinediones rosiglitazone and pioglitazone were introduced for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Like their forerunner troglitazone, which was removed from the market following reports of hepatotoxicity, these drugs act on the gamma subtype of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPAR-gamma) in the cell nucleus, resulting in heightened insulin sensitivity and improved glycemic control.

Metformin decreases hepatic glucose production, decreases intestinal absorption of glucose, and improves insulin sensitivity by increasing peripheral glucose uptake and utilization.

Sulfonylureas like Glipizide increase the amount of insulin released by the pancreas.