Following rejections earlier this year of two previous anti-obesity drugs, the FDA’s Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs advisory committee has recommended approval for Contrave, the combination of sustained-release formulations of naltrexone and buproprion from Orexigen Therapeutics. The committee voted 13-7 in favor of the drug, saying that the benefits of Contrave outweighed its risks. The committee…

This content is exclusive to CardioExchange. To continue reading, please log in or request an invitation.

A new analysis finds that long-term aspirin use reduces deaths from several common cancers. Previous studies had only shown a convincing benefit in colorectal cancer. In the new meta-analysis, appearing online in the Lancet, Peter Rothwell and colleagues combined data from more than 25,000 patients enrolled in long-term randomized trials of aspirin. They showed that…

This content is exclusive to CardioExchange. To continue reading, please log in or request an invitation.

A U.S. Senate report exposes new information about the relationship between Abbott Laboratories and Mark Midei, the interventional cardiologist who has been accused of implanting hundreds of unnecessary stents at St. Joseph Medical Center in Maryland. News stories on the report appear in today’s Baltimore Sun, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. While still working at…

This content is exclusive to CardioExchange. To continue reading, please log in or request an invitation.

Ticagrelor has received approval for marketing in Europe, according to AstraZeneca. The drug, which will go under the brand name of Brilique in Europe, will not be available in most European countries until the second half of 2011, the company said. A decision about the approval of ticagrelor in the U.S., where it will be…

This content is exclusive to CardioExchange. To continue reading, please log in or request an invitation.

In the EINSTEIN-DVT noninferiority study, 3449 patients with acute DVT were randomized to receive open label oral rivaroxaban or conventional therapy with enoxaparin followed by warfarin or acenocoumarol for 3, 6, or 12 months. The rate of recurrent VTE, the primary efficacy outcome, was lower with rivaroxaban treatment than with enoxaparin treatment, successfully demonstrating noninferiority for…

This content is exclusive to CardioExchange. To continue reading, please log in or request an invitation.

Here’s the good news, according to Larry Goldstein, the chairman of the statement writing committee for the revised American Heart Association/American Stroke Association Guidelines for the Primary Prevention of Stroke: “Between 1999 and 2006, there’s been over a 30 percent reduction in stroke death rates in the United States and we think the majority of…

This content is exclusive to CardioExchange. To continue reading, please log in or request an invitation.

A survey from Scotland has found an increased risk for cardiovascular disease in people taking tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs). In an article in the European Heart Journal, the researchers write that they failed to find any increased risk with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Nearly 15,000 Scottish adults without known histories of CVD were followed for…

This content is exclusive to CardioExchange. To continue reading, please log in or request an invitation.