Vioxx, also known as refecoxib, is a prescription COX-2 selective, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that was approved by FDA in May 1999 for the relief of the signs and symptoms of osteoarthritis, for the management of acute pain in adults, and for the treatment of menstrual symptoms.
Vioxx was withdrawn from U.S. drugstores in September 2004 after a Merck study showed that long-term users of the drug had twice the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Thrombosis-on-a-chip, vasculature-on-a-chip and engineered models of human cardiac fibrosis are just a few of the new technologies revolutionizing research into human cardiovascular disease--a condition responsible for 17 million deaths per annum globally.
Merck & Co. will pay $950 million and one of its units will plead guilty to a criminal charge to resolve a U.S. probe of its illegal marketing of the painkiller Vioxx.
It is a common belief that drugs given the okay by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are safer and more effective than they have to be to win approval, according to a new study. Especially in the first few years after a drug becomes available, researchers note, there are still questions about how well it will work and whether it will have any serious side effects warn experts. For example FDA-approved painkiller Vioxx was pulled off the market in 2004 after longer-term evidence showed that it may increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
According to the latest study, taking some commonly prescribed painkillers for even a short while might increase the risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke. The study also reports that when heart attack survivors took the drugs for as little as a week, it appeared to boost their risk of another heart attack, stroke or sudden death. The results, published in Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association, surprised even the researchers.
Using skin cells from young patients who have a severe genetic heart defect, Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have generated beating heart cells that carry the same genetic mutation. The newly created human heart cells - cardiomyocytes - allowed the researchers for the first time to examine and characterize the disorder at the cellular level.
It has been revealed that the academic publisher Elsevier has admitted its Australian office produced six fake medical journals between 2000 and 2005.
Adverse reactions to drugs represent one of the leading causes of death in the United States. But there may be a way to predict who is most likely to suffer a toxic side effect to a drug before they have even taken it.
In searching for a simple way to identify individuals with smoking-related lung injury, scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College have stumbled upon a potential explanation for why the class of pain-relievers known as COX-2 inhibitors increases the risk of heart problems among users.
Merck Frosst Canada Ltd. has learned that the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan has issued a decision allowing Merck's appeal and quashing an order of the Court of Queen's Bench that had certified a class proceeding on behalf of Canadian residents of all provinces except Quebec who purchased or ingested VIOXX.
A chemical component of licorice may offer a new approach to preventing colorectal cancer without the adverse side effects of other preventive therapies, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers report.
Better strategies to tackle ghostwriting in the medical literature are the subject of a debate by leading authors in next week's issue of the open-access journal PLoS Medicine.
Researchers have unraveled crucial details of how aging causes broken bones to heal slowly, or not at all, according to study results published today in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.
Atherosclerosis - a disease that includes the buildup of fatty, cholesterol-laden lumps of cells inside the artery wall - is the underlying cause of heart attacks and strokes.
With new drugs being reviewed by regulatory agencies and then released onto the market faster than ever before, patients' safety is being compromised, warns a study published on bmj.com.
Fitch Ratings has affirmed Merck & Co.'s (Merck) ratings, and revised the Rating Outlook to Negative from Stable.
The study, an analysis of people who took the arthritis drug carried out by Dr. Robert Bresalier of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, has found Vioxx doubles the risk of strokes and heart attacks.
Since Rofecoxib (Vioxx) was withdrawn from the worldwide market based on the safety findings of the Adenomatous Polyp Prevention on Vioxx (APPROVe) study, the uncertainty around the cardiovascular safety of NSAIDs and COX-2 inhibitors remains and leaves practitioners with difficult management decisions for the hundreds of millions of patients worldwide who continue to require pain-relieving therapy to maintain an acceptable quality of life.
Americans are likely to be exposed to unacceptable side effects of FDA-approved drugs such as Vioxx in the future because of fatal flaws in the way new drugs are tested and marketed, according to research to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
An "intensifying focus on safety and a diminished tolerance for side effects" by FDA have "dramatically lowered" the chances that experimental medications will reach the market and have led to a recent decrease in approvals of new treatments, according to pharmaceutical companies, the Wall Street Journal reports.
State appeals courts in New Jersey and Texas last week "delivered a one-two punch to the liability suits against Merck for its Vioxx painkiller," an indication that "some sanity still exists in the tort system -- at least at the appellate level," according to a Wall Street Journal editorial.