Yesterday the United States Food and Drug Administration issued a drug-safety press release warning diabetes patients of the harmful side effects of DPP-4, a class of Type-2 diabetes inhibitor that has been reported to cause severe joint pain.
DPP-4 includes the drugs sitagliptin, saxagliptin, linagliptin, and alogliptin. The warning comes as the FDA found alarming data within it’s incident-tracking software. Type-2 diabetes patients complained of severe joint pain from just one day after taking the medication up to several years of taking the medicine.
The same patients were reported as saying their pain cleared up after ceasing the drugs.
Diabetes patients who are using these drugs don’t have to stop the medication, but should contact their doctor if they start to experience “severe and persistent joint pain.”
Patients should not stop taking their DPP-4 inhibitor medicine, but should contact their health care professional right away if they experience severe and persistent joint pain.
Doctors are encouraged to now view DPP-4’s as a possible cause of joint pain.
FOX News identified Januvia (sitagliptin) as the drug which cause the most cases of severe joint pain, logging 28 cases. AstraZeneca Plc’s Onglyza (saxagliptin) was responsible for five cases while three other drugs were responsible for one case each.
Statistics were not provided regarding how many Type-2 diabetes patients took each drug.
In all, 33 cases of acute joint pain were logged by the FDA’s system.
A report by NBC News reporter Maggie Fox quoted the FDA as saying they will now require new “Warning and Protection” verbiage be added to “the labels” of all DPP-4 drugs.
We have added a new Warning and Precaution about this risk to the labels of all medicines in this drug class, called dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors.
Januvia was approved in 2006. Cases of joint point add to other sever side-effects the drug causes, included pancreatitis. Onglyza “been linked to a higher risk of heart failure.”
