Deans' stroke musings: EU regulator advises caution on painkiller diclofenac

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Friday, June 14, 2013

EU regulator advises caution on painkiller diclofenac

Be careful out there.

EU regulator advises caution on painkiller diclofenac

Europe's drugs agency warned on Friday that use of the common painkiller diclofenac, especially in high doses, carries extra heart attack risks which should be taken into consideration by doctors prescribing the drug.
While it said the benefits of diclofenac, which is produced by several companies, still outweighed the risks, the European Medicines Agency recommended that precautions should be taken in certain patients.

"Patients who have serious underlying heart or circulatory conditions, such as heart failure, heart disease, circulatory problems or a previous heart attack or stroke, should not use diclofenac," it said in a statement.
EMA's decision, made by it's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee, comes after a large international study last month showed that long-term, high-dose use of painkillers such as diclofenac and ibuprofen increases the risk of a major vascular event - a heart attack, stroke or dying from cardiovascular disease - by around a third.

This puts the heart risks of generic non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like diclofenac on a par with a newer class of NSAIDs known as COX-2 inhibitors or coxibs, which includes Vioxx - a painkiller that US drugmaker Merck pulled from sale in 2004 because of links to heart risks.
EMA also said patients with certain risk factors such as high blood pressure, raised blood cholesterol, diabetes or smoking should "only use diclofenac after careful consideration".

"Healthcare professionals will also be advised to periodically re-assess the need for patients to continue taking the medicine," it added.

The agency said the safety of NSAIDs has been closely monitored in the European Union in recent years and safety reviews carried out in 2005, 2006 and 2012 found they were linked to a small increased risk of blood clots, which in some cases led to heart attacks or strokes.