How safe is Celebrex?
The FDA has thousands of accounts suggesting the painkiller may be linked to heart attacks. Critics are unsure if flaw is in drug or agency’s reporting system. A Tennessee woman wrote to the Food and Drug Administration, brokenhearted and mystified. Her 66-year-old husband had taken Celebrex for arm and back pain. They talked, over coffee , about overgrown trees that needed trimming. It was their last conversation. That day, the man suffered a stroke, robbing him of his speech and independence. “He was like a child,” his wife wrote in January 2005 . “He could walk, but could not turn a light switch on or even brush his teeth.” Her letter was among hundreds of reports sent to the FDA about Celebrex that were reviewed by The Boston Globe. From August 2004 to July 2005 , as consumers grew increasingly wary about Celebrex, they filed thousands of documents with the FDA. The reports raise heart attack and stroke concerns that are similar to those linked to two other painkillers, Bextra and
