California HealthLine reports today that three studies indicate strong links between COX-2s and cardiovascular problems. In fact, the link is so strong that the studies, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, may well lead to the complete withdrawal of COX-2s from the market.

The three studies investigated Vioxx, Celebrex, and Bextra; all had significant negative side effects, ranging from delayed wound healing to double the risk for heart attack and stroke to kidney damage.

The NEJM editorialized that, based on the results of the studies, "physicians are dismayed, pharmaceutical companies are embarrassed and financially threatened, and patients are injured."

If the physicians had seen fit to prescribe COX-2s only for those patients who clearly could not take other drugs, the scope of this problem would have been drastically dimished. But one cannot point the finger only at physicians; Merck, Pfizer et al spent hundreds of millions promoting these drugs.