Glaxo says Avandia data comforts, experts unsure

By Maggie Fox and Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Early results from an ongoing study of GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Avandia was unable to show any increase in heart attacks among patients, but several experts said the evidence still suggests the popular diabetes drug raises the risk of heart attack.

The interim analysis of the study, funded by the drugmaker and published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday, did show twice as many patients taking the drug had congestive heart failure, researchers said.

That congestive heart failure issue is already well known, Glaxo said separately.

Last month Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio created a stir when he published a study in the same journal suggesting the drug raised the risk of heart attacks by 43 percent.

Nissen's was a meta-analysis -- a pooled analysis of data from several trials.

How the company and U.S. health officials communicated Avandia's risks to doctors and patients will be the subject of a U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing on Wednesday.

Philip Horne of Britain's Newcastle University and a team from around the world looked at the ongoing study of 4,400 patients to see if they could find any evidence that patients taking Avandia, known generically as rosiglitazone, were more likely to have a heart attack.

Glaxo and three independent heart experts had sharply different views on what the results of the study meant.