Healthy Update Newsletter brought to you by
http://www.herbals-unlimited.com

Study Focuses on Arthritis Drugs

NEW YORK (AP) - Patients taking the anti-arthritis drug Vioxx are more
likely to suffer high-blood pressure and swelling than patients taking
Celebrex, a competing product, according to a new study.
The findings being presented at a medical meeting Friday affirmed an
earlier
study commissioned by Celebrex manufacturer Pharmacia Corp. The new
study -
also done by Pharmacia - is potentially significant, however, because
the
Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) requires two
investigations
before it will consider allowing a company to claim superiority over a
competitor's product.

About 43 million patients suffer from the type of arthritis Celebrex
and
Vioxx are designed to treat; of that total, about 42 percent suffer
from
high blood pressure, according to Peapack, N.J. based Pharmacia. The
drugs
target the most common from of arthritis known as osteoarthritis,
which
wears down the cartilage between the joints.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Mom used Celebrex, I used Vioxx. We used one bottle of BAF Formula 1
and no
longer need our arthritis medications. If you have arthritis you
should go
to http://www.herbals-unlimited.com/arthritis.htm
and check out this wonderful product for arthritis with CMO and
Seacucumber.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Vioxx is Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck & Co.'s second-largest
selling
drug, with revenues totaling $2.2 billion last year - about 10
percent of
Merck's global sales.

Celebrex is still the market leader, however. Introduced in January
1999 -
six months before Vioxx - Celebrex has annual revenues of $2.6
billion,
making it Pharmacia's best-selling drug.
Pharmacia, which co-markets the drug with Pfizer Inc., is in the
process of
filing the studies with the FDA, spokeswoman Judy Glova said.

Merck spokeswoman Christine Fanelle countered that the FDA will only
consider ``well-supported, well-designed'' clinical trails and said
Pharmacia's study was flawed because the Vioxx dose was twice as much
as
should be used in patients beginning treatment.

She said doctors treating patients at risk of high blood pressure are
instructed to give patients 12.5 milligrams of Vioxx. However, most
prescriptions written are for 25 milligrams, the amount used in the
Pharmacia study.
Fanelle added that Merck conducted its own study of 382 patients last
year
that found no difference in the incidence of high blood pressure and
swelling between patients using Celebrex or Vioxx.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
If you have arthritis, I urge you to stop by and check out BAF Formula
1......it gets rid of the pain, swelling etc. Please.........check it
out.......I did......MOM did.........it worked!
http://www.herbals-unlimited.com/arthritis.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------

Banc of America Securities analyst Len Yaffe didn't expect the new
study to
affect prescribing patterns because doctors were already aware of the
side
effects.

``This isn't new, and all because Pharmacia takes the studies to the
FDA
doesn't mean the FDA will accept them,'' said Yaffe. He added it
should be a
moot point by next year because Pharmacia is expected to introduce a
new
product that is likely to be more effective than either Vioxx or
Celebrex.

The study is likely to add further grist to an expensive battle
between the
two drug companies. In the ten months ended October 2000, Merck
poured $145
million into consumer advertising for Vioxx, the most spent on any
drug,
according to IMS Healthcare Market Research. Over the same period,
Pharmacia
pumped $60.5 million for Celebrex.

In the first study of 810 patients, 16.5 percent of patients taking
Vioxx
experienced high blood pressure versus 10 percent of those taking
Celebrex.
In the second study of 1,100, patients 14.9 percent of patients
taking Vioxx
demonstrated higher blood pressure compared to 6.9 percent of Celebrex
patients.

In the first study 9.4 percent of Vioxx-treated patients experienced
an
increase in swelling, compared to 4.9 percent of Celebrex-treated
patients.
In the replicate study, 7.7 percent of Vioxx-treated patients
experienced
swelling, compared to 4.6 percent of patients in the Celebrex group.

The new study is being presented at the American Geriatric Society
meeting
in Chicago.