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People who take the painkiller Celebrex are almost twice as likely to suffer a heart attack as people using other treatments to relieve arthritis pain, says a New Zealand Medical Research Institute study released Wednesday.
The study authors reviewed six studies involving 12,780 patients and found that those who took Celebrex had a 1.88-fold increased risk of heart attack compared to patients who took other drugs, the Associated Press reported.
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The findings appear in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Celebrex belongs to a class of drugs called cox-2 inhibitors. Two other kinds of cox-2 inhibitors, Bextra and Vioxx, have been pulled off the market due to safety concerns. One study found that Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attack after 18 months of use.
These latest findings are critical because they indicate that the risks associated with Celebrex are similar to those of Vioxx, said Professor Richard Beasley, director of the New Zealand Medical Research Institute.
"Given the popularity of celecoxib (Celebrex) in the treatment of arthritis ... drug regulatory agencies need to urgently re-examine the assessment of the drug in light of these findings," Beasley told the AP.
Celebrex is made by Pfizer Inc. A company spokesman said the study's findings were misleading because the researchers analyzed only six of 48 available studies.
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