GlaxoSmithKline (GSK): Bad News Hits Diabetes Drug Hard

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Sales of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) diabetes drug Avandia have taken a pounding since a study showed that the drug increased heart risk. According to a research note from Morgan Stanley, Avandia and a related drug  Avandamet had a combined 35.3 percent share of the market for pharmaceuticals in their class in the week ended June 1. Before the study about the risks of the drug appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, that share was 53.8%.

News reports have indicated that GSK has tried to discredit the journal report and may have tried to intimidate a doctor who offered similar findings to the FDA. The agency is now considering putting a warning on the medication.

Looks like the strong-arming didn’t work.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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