GSK tries to shore up blockbuster diabetes drug

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is making a last-ditch effort to shore up the flagging sales of its blockbuster diabetes drug rosiglitazone.

The British company recently brought out a study, done over a period of five and a half years, involving 4,400 patients in 25 countries, which shows that rosiglitazone does not increase the risk of heart ailment compared to other commonly used diabetes medicines like metformin or sulfonylurea.

Rosiglitazone, which grossed annual sales of £1.4 billion in 2006, was in the eye of a storm after the US Food & Drug Administration, the world's leading drug regulator, in 2007 issued a ‘black box’ warning about cardiovascular risks associated with the medicine.

This was followed by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) advising against the use of rosiglitazone.

All this led to GSK's worldwide sales from rosiglitazone, which is marketed as Avandia globally, and as Windia in India, falling to £877 million in 2007 and £512 million in 2008, as per industry estimates.

So by presenting its study called Record (rosiglitazone evaluated for cardiac outcomes and regulation of glycaemia in diabetes) at the ADA conference, the company is trying to convince physicians about the safety drug, says a leading New Delhi-based diabetologist who was present at the conference.