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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 similiar 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.
back
to Arthritis index

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