A Tale of Two Drugs: Meridia and Avandia, and the Issues that Separated Them

Avandia and Meridia are different drugs with parallel regulatory histories: both are long-marketed treatments for metabolic disease. Both have an increased risk of cardiovascular events. And both were considered for withdrawal at roughly the same time by the same FDA division. But while there were many similarities between the two, the reviews were markedly different with markedly different outcomes.