San Francisco Chronicle, "Studies confirm arthritis drugs raise heart attack risk"

          Two studies released Monday have turned up new evidence that all of the popular arthritis painkillers known as COX-2 inhibitors may put users at greater risk of heart attacks and strokes. COX-2 inhibitors, which are promoted as being less likely to cause gastrointestinal bleeding than other widely used painkillers, were aggressively advertised after they came on the market in the late 1990s.
          The first of the two papers published online by the journal Circulation found that patients who had had heart bypass surgery and were taking Pfizer Inc.'s Bextra, in combination with an experimental medication, were three times more likely to have strokes and heart attacks than patients taking a placebo. The statistically significant tripling of the risk showed up when researchers combined the results of two earlier studies involving more than 2, 000 people in a statistical technique called a meta-analysis. A second study found that when mice that are genetically prone to hardening of the arteries were treated with a COX-2 drug and an aspirin substitute, their condition worsened rather than improving, as researchers had anticipated.
          The latest bad news for makers and users of COX-2 drugs comes a month before the Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to hold an unusual three- day hearing Feb. 16-18 of two advisory panels to consider safety issues that have arisen around the class of drugs. Planning for the meeting began in the fall after Merck & Co. took its blockbuster COX-2 drug Vioxx off the market after a study it sponsored found heightened cardiovascular risk in volunteers taking the drug.