Given the option of living with pain or an increased heart attack risk, some Baby Boomers are reaching for Celebrex. Take Randy Highley, a 55-year-old chief financial officer at a Chicago investment advisory firm. Before competing in triathalons, he takes several Vioxx for knee pain, dipping into a three-month supply he got before the drug was pulled.

“We can drink and there are risks associated with drinking, and I think this is a far more dramatic case for letting us assume [a known] risk,” he says. “If there was some danger and they did not tell you, that would be a problem for me. But knowing, just from media accounts, I think this is a risk that I could certainly take and feel comfortable with it.”

Such attitudes help explain how sales of Pfizer’s Celebrex jumped 18 percent last year, even though it must now be sold with a Black Box label warning.

“People are coming back to prescription pain medications in a big way because there is an epidemic of arthritis and pain out there,” says Calvin Brown, an associate professor of rheumatology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who prescribes Celebrex to certain patients. “Baby Boomers are now in their arthritis years. There is a huge need for painkillers to help people with arthritis.”

This helps explain why Merck is pushing so hard to convince the FDA to approve Arcoxia, its follow-up to Vioxx. And Novartis also hopes to get clearance to sell its Prexige painkiller. And with an estimated 45 million Americans suffering from some form of arthritis, plenty of people want pain relief. And why not? Live now, die later.

Full story in The Chicago Tribune.

[tags]Celebrex, Merck, Pfizer, Vioxx[/tags]