Welcome to Medical and pharmacy news

An inhaled lung medication used to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchitis may slightly increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from coronary disease, researchers said Tuesday.

The increased risks were found in people who took tiotropium, sold in Canada and the U.S. as Spiriva, or the older medication ipratropium, available generically and under the brand name Atrovent, for at least a month.

The findings, which appear in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association, mean that for every 40 patients using either drug for one year, there would be one extra death linked to the medication, said study author Dr. Sonal Singh of Wake Forest University’s medical school.

The drugs are taken to relax muscles and open airways in the lungs.

The researchers analyzed data from 17 international studies involving more than 14,700 people to compare health risks of people who took the drugs to treat symptoms of COPD to those who took other inhaled medications for the same symptoms or a placebo.

Among about 7,400 patients on either inhaled drug, 1.8 per cent, or 135 people, developed fatal or nonfatal heart problems over a period of several weeks to several years. In comparison, among the second group of 7,300 people, 1.2 per cent, or 86, had the heart problems.

The company told the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this year that its own data had linked Spiriva with a possible increased risk for strokes.

But Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH and Pfizer Inc., which jointly market Spiriva, said Tuesday that they had recently given the FDA a new analysis of that data plus new long-term data, which they said shows initial concerns about strokes were unfounded.

“We strongly disagree with the conclusion” in the new study, the companies said in a statement.

Dr. Mark Rosen, former president of the American College of Chest Physicians and a lung specialist on New York’s Long Island, said the data “are very compelling but they’re not conclusive.”

It’s unclear what caused the apparent increased risk, Rosen said. The studies were not designed to look for heart problems, and it’s possible patients had heart problems before they started taking the lung medications.

Rosen called the findings “an excellent reason to do more research to figure out why this is true, if it is true and not a statistical fluke.”

With files from the Associated Press

Other news:

• New Jersey Health Commissioner Should Improve Prenatal Care Resources To Address Racial, Economic Disparities, Editorial States
• Brazil To Produce Generic Version Of Merck’s Antiretroviral Efavirenz
• 9.2 Million Child Deaths In 2007