Actos: Drug Promoted for Diabetes Prevention Causes Liver Damage

Health in a pill! Take Actos forever, and you stand a small chance of putting off full-fledged diabetes. Just don't pay attention to the adverse effects you'll be risking.

by Heidi Stevenson

26 March 2011

Diabetes is a devastating disease, and it's on the rise. The vast majority of cases are caused by medical treatments and lifestyle choices, especially eating a modern diet out of supermarket prepared so-called foods. Of course, modern medicine doesn't focus on prevention. It focuses on where the profits are: treatment. As if Big Pharma weren't raking in enough money already, they're now treating nonexistent diseases. In that light, the manufacturer, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, financed a study of its existing drug, Actos (generically called pioglitazone) to see if they could sell it to people defined with the non-disease called prediabetes.

And it worked! Well, sorta. It slowed diabetes development in a whopping 20%—one out of five—potential patients. Naturally, this news is being yelled from mass media's rooftops and by the bought-out diabetes charity groups.

What they're not pointing out is the drug's downside: Actos causes heart failure and liver damage. That's a rather high risk for a 1 in 5 chance of slowing diabetes' onset.

The study, "Pioglitazone for Diabetes Prevention in Impaired Glucose Tolerance", was published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The article starts with:

Impaired glucose tolerance is associated with increased rates of cardiovascular disease and conversion to type 2 diabetes mellitus. Interventions that may prevent or delay such occurrences are of great clinical importance.

There certainly isn't any argument to be made against the idea that preventing or delaying diabetes is a good thing. However, the implication that drugs can make an unhealthy person healthy is utter nonsense. Instead of focusing on a drug for prevention—and one with such serious adverse effects!—doesn't it make far more sense to place the emphasis on genuine health? Diabetes is usually a disease of years of poor health habits.

Interestingly, those who received the drug, Actos, had a higher weight gain than those who received placebo, and edema was twice as frequent.

You can expect Actos to be pushed on people defined as prediabetic before long. It sounds so easy! Don't worry about exercising. Keep eating a diet of garbage food. Just take a pill and you won't get diabetes. Except, of course, that's not the real story. The real story is that you'll have only a 1 in 5 chance of avoiding diabetes for about 2½ years, and if you're one of that 20%, then you'll have to continue taking the drug.

While taking the drug, you'll be at risk of liver damage and heart failure. There's a good chance that you'll suffer from edema, weight gain, headaches, muscle pains, tooth problems, respiratory tract infections, and smaller but very real chances of fractures and vision damage.

Such a deal! Brought to you straight from Big Pharma, the folk who want you to believe that you can find health in a pill.

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