United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Vioxx was removed from sale in New Zealand yesterday and also the States so I'm assuming this will be worldwide. http://www.adrugrecall.com/news/vioxx-recall.html It is one of the most widely used anti inflammatories here thanks mainly to aggressive marketing (funny they didn't mention the potentially fatal side effects!) and its withdrawal is already causing probs, I personally know 3 people on it. I'm sure I've read here about some of you guys using it. This really highlights for me the fact that trials for many new drugs are just NOT long enough-and it looks like the side effects have been known about for a while, just not proven until now. Wonder how many people knew that before they took it?
If you're on this drug see your doc asap I guess. What a bummer if it's the one that works for you :0(

Jenny
I finally agreed to take a pain killer and took Vioxx for only three days. It was amazing I took it and then kept complaining to my husband -"something is missing I can't figure it out" and after doing tons of work I realized it was the first time in my life I was totally pain free. The next two days I kept tell him "Wow this is great, so this is how you feel" ... but on the third day my legs blew up like balloons and the doctor took me off... I felt bad it was a good feeling and I did not realize how much I hurt until the pain was gone (wow that sounds like and old joke) ... but after reading so much about it I was relieved. They talked about me taking it again just recently and I refused... boy am I glad.
Thanks for posting it
Kath M

Vioxx has just been stopped in the UK as well. Aparently you could have taken in for up to 18 months with no real problems, but taking it continuosly creates a very real danger of contracting cancer. They had the choice of labelling the warning, or withdrawing the product completely. They chose the latter option. Is there something else they're not telling us ?
BTW, if you want to know more, the product is manufactured by Merck, Sharp & Dohme Ltd., in the UK, and Merck,Inc in the 'States. Presumably they have a website, and a FAQs section.

The link I gave gives quite a lot of info-always be careful when looking at manufacturers websites because unsurprisingly they are not very up front and honest about the seriousness of the side effects-doubling your risk of heart attack is not a minor thing. What annoys me about this is they released the drug for use in 1999, noticed problems in 2000, and here we are in 2004 and only now are we finding out about this. I wonder how many people had heart attacks in the meantime?

Jenny
You know what bothers me is all of the elderly who are not on the Internet and cannot/do not read the possible side effects.

They just assume if the doctor gave it to them its ok. Here in USA when a drug is give we get big long sheets of information in very tiny print of possible problems etc... but I doubt they read them.

Kath

Hi,
Is this the same as Bextra that Sandy is taking? How heart breaking if it is?