Quoted from http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090622/full/news.2009.588.html
Heart study questions diabetes drugs
A molecular pathway could explain how a class of drugs leads to heart failure.
Published online 22 June 2009 | Nature
Charlotte Schubert
Researchers who study how tumours balloon in size have discovered one way that enlargement of the heart can lead to heart failure. The work, although mostly done in mice, could help explain why a class of diabetes drugs called thiazolidinediones (TZDs) increase the risk of heart failure.
These drugs have been controversial since a 2007 analysis1 of Avandia (rosiglitazone), a TZD made by GlaxoSmithKline, suggested that patients taking it are at increased risk of heart attack. Less controversial are data linking TZDs with heart failure, a distinct condition in which the heart cannot pump enough blood through the body.
"We already knew if you had heart failure you probably should not be taking these drugs, but this paper provides an additional explanation why," says Clay Semenkovich, an endocrinologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri.
The work suggests that a molecule activated by TZDs, called PPAR-γ, underlies one aspect of heart failure.