Pharmaceutical Drug Litigation Updates

Antidepressants linked to risk of brain bleeds

Quoted from http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/17/us-antidepressants-idUSBRE89G1PB20121017

Antidepressants linked to risk of brain bleeds

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK | Wed Oct 17, 2012 4:24pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People using a common class of antidepressants may have slightly increased odds of suffering bleeding in the brain - though the risk is still very small, researchers reported Wednesday.

The antidepressants are known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and include widely used drugs like fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), citalopram (Celexa) and paroxetine (Paxil).

SSRIs have been linked to a risk of stomach bleeding. But studies have come to conflicting findings on whether SSRI users have any higher risk of hemorrhagic strokes, which happen when there is bleeding in or around the brain.

So for the new study, researchers pooled the findings from 16 past studies involving more than 500,000 people who were on SSRIs or not.

Overall, antidepressant users were about 40 to 50 percent more likely to suffer bleeding in or around the brain, the researchers report in the journal Neurology.

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Pfizer Must Pay $45 Million in Prempro Cases, Court Rules

Quoted from http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-04/pfizer-must-pay-45-million-in-prempro-cases-court-rules.html

Pfizer Must Pay $45 Million in Prempro Cases, Court Rules

January 04, 2012, 12:17 PM EST

By Jef Feeley

 

Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Pfizer Inc. must pay more than $45 million in damages to two women who blamed the company’s menopause drugs for their breast cancers, an appeals court ruled.

Connie Barton and Donna Kendall, two Illinois women who sued Pfizer units Wyeth and Pharmacia & Upjohn over their menopause medications, deserved both compensatory and punitive damages over the companies’ handling of the drugs, a panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled yesterday.

“We are very disappointed with the court’s decisions in these cases and continue to believe there was no basis in fact or law for the jury verdicts,” Chris Loder, a spokesman for New York-based Pfizer, said in an e-mailed statement. Pfizer officials will ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to review the lower court’s findings, he said.

More than 6 million women took Prempro and related menopause drugs to treat symptoms including hot flashes and mood swings before a 2002 study highlighted their links to cancer. At one point, Pfizer and its units faced more than 10,000 lawsuits over the medications.

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Firm with Earth City unit is settling suits over drugs tied to suicides

Quoted from http://www.stltoday.com/business/article_c569f2c4-58a7-5432-a939-ff22e90583e5.html

Firm with Earth City unit is settling suits over drugs tied to suicides

BY JIM DOYLE

Posted: Saturday, October 30, 2010 12:05 am

ST. LOUIS • A month after its Earth City subsidiary pleaded guilty of illegally marketing antidepressants to children and adolescents, Forest Laboratories is now settling a string of wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits from the parents of children who took the drugs Celexa and Lexapro.

Fifty-four lawsuits, mostly involving suicides and attempted suicides by teenagers in various parts of the country, accuse the New York-based pharmaceutical company of concealing a negative pediatric study on Celexa, duping physicians about the drug's clinical trials, and targeting children in aggressive promotions of Celexa and a sister drug, Lexapro.

Four of the cases were settled Friday, and two additional cases were settled in recent weeks.

A surge of related settlements, which could total millions of dollars, is expected in the months ahead as the pharmaceutical company attempts to move beyond the controversy surrounding its marketing of antidepressants to children.

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