Sokolove Success Blog – Our Perspective on Legal News that Matters

High blood pressure isn’t healthy for you. But could the cure be worse than the disease?

That’s the question now in front of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is currently evaluating data from two clinical trials in which patients with type 2 diabetes who took the blood pressure medication Benicar (olmesartan) had a higher rate of heart attack, sudden death or stroke compared to patients who used a placebo.

The FDA is currently conducting an ongoing safety review of Benicar and cautions that it has not definitively concluded the medication increases the risk of death.

Benicar belongs to a class of drugs called angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs). These drugs are widely used to treat hypertension, heart failure, and to prevent kidney failure in diabetics. Other drugs in the class include Micardis (telmisartan), Cozaar (losartan), Diovan (valsartan), Avapro (irbesartan), and Teveten (eprosartan). Approximately 82 million prescriptions for ARBs were written in 2009.

Shortly after the FDA’s announcement last month, the findings of a new study published in the medical journal The Lancet Oncology concluded that ARBs are associated with an increased risk of cancer.  According to Medpage Today, researchers at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland found that in a meta-analysis of nine published studies, ARBs were associated with a “modest but statistically significant 8 percent increase in the relative risk of a new cancer.” However, no increase in the risk of dying from cancer was found.  Researchers caution that further study is needed to draw conclusions about the risk of cancer associated with each drug in the class.

While regulators and scientists work to collect and sift through the evidence, Sokolove Law will continue to investigate reports of cardiac death and/or cancer relative to Benicar and other antihypertensive drugs.