Risk of serious adverse cardiovascular events associated with varenicline: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: There have been postmarketing reports of adverse cardiovascular events associated with the use of varenicline, a widely used smoking cessation drug. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to ascertain the serious adverse cardiovascular effects of varenicline compared with placebo among tobacco users. METHODS: We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, websites of regulatory authorities and registries of clinical trials, with no date or language restrictions, through September 2010 (updated March 2011) for published and unpublished studies. We selected double-blind randomized controlled trials of at least one week's duration involving smokers or people who used smokeless tobacco that reported on cardiovascular events (ischemia, arrhythmia, congestive heart failure, sudden death or cardiovascular-related death) as serious adverse events asociated with the use of varenicline. RESULTS: We analyzed data from 14 double-blind randomized controlled trials involving 8216 participants. The trials ranged in duration from 7 to 52 weeks. Varenicline was associated with a significantly increased risk of serious adverse cardiovascular events compared with placebo (1.06% [52/4908] in varenicline group v. 0.82% [27/3308] in placebo group; Peto odds ratio [OR] 1.72, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.09-2.71; I(2) = 0%). The results of various sensitivity analyses were consistent with those of the main analysis, and a funnel plot showed no publication bias. There were too few deaths to allow meaningful comparisons of mortality. INTERPRETATION: Our meta-analysis raises safety concerns about the potential for an increased risk of serious adverse cardiovascular events associated with the use of varenicline among tobacco users.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.039 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.021 | 0.051 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".