Quoted from http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aTC6jrBl_mwM
AstraZeneca Denied Drug’s Diabetes Link Years After Warning
By Jef Feeley and Margaret Cronin Fisk
Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- An AstraZeneca Plc saleswoman told a U.S. doctor the antipsychotic Seroquel didn’t cause diabetes almost four years after the company warned Japanese physicians about the drug’s links to the disease, internal documents show.
Nancy White, the saleswoman, and a colleague met with an unidentified doctor in July 2006 who reported “getting a lot of flak” from patients about Seroquel’s diabetes links, according to a note unsealed as part of a lawsuit. AstraZeneca wrote in November 2002 to Japanese doctors that it received a dozen reports of diabetes-related cases tied to Seroquel “where causality with the drug could not be ruled out.”
White said in the 2006 note that she told the physician that “there has been no causative effect” found between Seroquel and diabetes. The doctor “said he would not quit writing” prescriptions for Seroquel “due to this at this time,” White reported.
More than 15,000 patients have sued London-based AstraZeneca, claiming the company withheld information about links between diabetes and Seroquel. Many of the suits also claim AstraZeneca promoted Seroquel, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for unapproved uses.