Celebrex Drug Costs 100 Times Aspirin And Provides Less Benefits

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"Celebrate, Celebrate," say commercials for Celebrex, a modified form of aspirin for arthritis. Please hold the celebration! Vioxx, by the way, is a similar drug.

The benefit to users of these aspirin-substitute drugs is that those who are subject to stomach distress from aspirin may be able to tolerate the substitutes. The benefit to the companies making the drugs is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But there is a cost to their users beside money.

"Celebrex. The first arthritis medicine that targets only the COX-2* enzyme," say the present ads.

True. But at what deficit to the patient? For those not stomach-sensitive to plain old aspirin, there is possibly an increased risk of cancer. Aspirin, shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer reduces the inflammatory enzymes COX-1 and 2 in the blood.

Now research by the noted inflammation experts Dr. Desmond J. Fitzgerald and Joseph F. Murphy** have shown that at least experimentally, the factor that stimulates angiogenesis, which provides fresh blood supplies to tumor cells***uses COX-1 to do its dirty work. So, by inhibiting COX-1, which aspirin does but the new substitutes don't, one may actually help destroy tumor cells. This would be no small benefit for aspirin users but not for Celebrex and Vioxx takers.

*COX is an abbreviation for cyclooxygenase.
**Dept. of Clinical Pharmacology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin 2, Ireland. As reported in FASEB Journal, July, 2001.
***The signaling molecule that causes the building of new blood supplies to feed tumor cells is called VEGF—Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor. It is critical to this angiogenesis process.

Celebrex Drug Costs 100 Times Aspirin And Provides Less Benefits Bibliography:

Dept. of Clinical Pharmacology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin 2, Ireland. As reported in FASEB Journal, July, 2001.