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The U.S. consumer group, Public Citizen, has accused Pfizer of burying s study suggesting its painkiller Celebrex® boosts the risk of heart attack and stroke.
The accusation comes a week after Public Citizen filed a petition urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to pull Pfizer's arthritis drugs Celebrex® and Bextra® from the market because of links to dangerous heart complications.
The study in question, which tested Celebrex® as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease, found that patients taking Celebrex® had a 3.6 times greater occurrence of serious heart events compared to those on a placebo, according to a Public Citizen analysis of the data. The trial took place from 1997 to 1999, according to a summary on the web site clinicalstudyresults.org, which includes study results provided by drug makers.
Public Citizen accused Pfizer of trying to hide the study, because when the company in December revealed that Celebrex® more than doubled heart attack risk in a large cancer-prevention trial it described the results as new.
"There is no excuse of this study not being made public," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the health unit at Public Citizen, which wrote the FDA recently, adding the study to its petition for the drugs' withdrawal.
The FDA had no comment on the latest Public Citizen submission, but has said it is reviewing the case.
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