How many people died because they took Vioxx?

Factual Questions
1

For all the media attention this issue has received recently I can’t find the anwer to this. Anyone know?

2

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6192603/

I doubt there will ever be a real number.

3

It’s difficult to get an accurate number because it’s not possible to determine how many of the people who died while taking Vioxx died because they were taking Vioxx.

I couldn’t find any total numbers in a PubMed search (for ‘rofecoxib death’). One study indicated that the risk of severe heart problems among people taking Vioxx was 2.38-fold that of people taking naproxen (JAMA. 2001 Aug 22-29;286(8):954-9). But a few studies have also found that Vioxx and Celebrex can help prevent colorectal cancer, so it’s possible that there are some people whose lives were saved by Vioxx also.

4

Not nearly as many as the trial lawyers would have us to believe.
They did come out of the woodwork just as soon as the information was released.

5

Not quite what you’re looking for, but this article, appearing in today’s LANCET, states that between 1 in 70 and 1 in 556 patients treated for one year with Vioxx had a heart attack (“myocardial infarction”).

Lat month, in this scathing ediorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, it was proposed that, perhaps, 160000 people may have suffered heart attacks or stroke due to Vioxx.

6

And again, from the LANCET, this editorial quotes the FDA as saying that about 27000 people in the US had a heart attack or “sudden cardiac death” as a consequence of taking Vioxx.

7

Thanks and thanks Reeder also. I’d seen that, but of course they don’t break down how many had heart attacks and how many died. Why not just say that a million people had a headache, a heart attack or died after taking Vioxx?

Frustrating that they don’t see fit to either publish that info or point out that there’s some major hole in the argument.

8

Yep, the trial lawyers will say anyone that died while taking Vioxx then it was the Vioxx that caused the death… they will win every case. They will get richer and probably bust the drug company.

9

Of course, the company did deliberately hide evidence that the drug was potentially dangerous. And the pharmaceutical industry is one of the largest in the country; most “innovative” drugs start as government-funded research in federal labs.

But yeah, the poor pharmaceutical companies are being persecuted by the government and the lawyers, for nothing more than heavily promoting a drug they knew to be dangerous! What kind of a world do we live in?

I guess this means the propaganda TV commercials the big drug companies are running must be working . . .

10

Not true. I work for a rather well known trial lawyer (we deal primarily with medical malpractice) and he’s wary of taking any Vioxx cases, because their merit is very shaky.