Active Low-Carber Forums - anti-inflammatory drug lowers heart attack risks

Quote:

Canakinumab raised the risk of fatal infections — about 1 of every 1,000 patients treated. Older people and diabetics were most vulnerable.

The drug had no effect on death rates once cancer, infection and heart risks were balanced out.

"The fatal infections are something to be concerned about" but overall trends are in a good direction, said Dr. David Goff of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Something to be concerned about? There's an ethics problem. A train's heading for ten people, you can pull a switch, and it changes tracks, the ten people live but another man dies as a result. Do you pull the switch? In this case, though, there's ten people on the other track.

Older people and diabetics were most vulnerable. So you could withhold the drug from them. But since they're a particularly vulnerable subgroup, not only to infection, but also to the diseases the drug is meant to prevent, I wonder if that doesn't fudge things a bit, the drug might not have resulted in as big a decrease in heart attacks if they weren't included.

Three doses of the drug--of course they'd have hoped to see improved response with increasing doses. Cynical me thinks that gave them three chances of one of the doses appearing effective (whether it actually was or not).