Novartis under fire over false Japanese drug data...

Test data on a widely used blood pressure drug from Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis was very likely fabricated and falsified, Japan's health minister says.

Norihisa Tamura on Friday characterized as "extremely regrettable" an incident in which an employee of the world's number two drug maker had hidden his affiliation during a medical study into the effects of Valsartan.

A study at Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine concluded that the drug, developed to treat high blood pressure, could also help to prevent strokes and angina.

But the university said on Thursday that incomplete clinical data had been used to support this finding and that had patients' records been used in their entirety, the study would have had a different conclusion.

 While Valsartan was effective in controlling high blood pressure, the university said the medication did not necessarily have any effect on strokes or angina. Full story...

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