NEW YORK, Nov 23 (Reuters) - A Philadelphia jury on Monday ordered Pfizer Inc to pay $28 million in punitive damages to a breast cancer survivor who had used the company;s hormone replacement drugs for 11 years.
That followed a $6.3 million award the jury ordered Pfizer to pay in compensatory damages on Friday after deciding that the drugs Premarin, Prempro, and Provera contributed to her cancer, and that the drugmakers failed to adequately warn about the risks associated with the medicines.
Pfizer inherited hundreds of personal injury lawsuits involving Premarin and Prepro, which are used to counter the effects of menopause, with its recent $67 billion acquisition of Wyeth. Provera is sold by Pharmacia & Upjohn, which Pfizer acquired in 2003.
Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, said it would challenge the latest verdict and another earlier verdict that went against Wyeth.
The punitive damages in the earlier case, which were unsealed on Monday was $75 million on top of a nearly $4 million compensatory award.
After rendering its verdict along with the $6.3 million award on Friday, the 12-member jury in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas decided that the drugmakers' actions or inactions equaled reckless disregard for plaintiff Donna Kendall's health and came back with the larger punitive damages figure.
"Today signals a resounding victory for not only Donna Kendall, but for all women who suffered breast cancers at the hands of Wyeth and Upjohn," Kendall's attorney Tobi Millrood said.
"This jury sent Wyeth and (Pharmacia &) Upjohn a message loud and clear that their actions were reckless and they should not be conducting themselves in a way that puts greed in front of health," Millrood added.
Pfizer said it was disappointed by the verdicts in this and the earlier case.
"The company believes that neither the awards of punitive damages nor the liability verdicts were supported by the evidence or the law. We plan to challenge both decisions in post-trial motions and, if necessary, though an appeal," Pfizer spokesman Chris Loder said in a statement.
"The company stands by its belief that its subsidiaries acted responsibly by providing proper and accurate warnings regarding the hormone therapy medicines' risks," Loder added.
Kendall, 66, of Decatur, Illinois, had been taking Prempro as well as Provera for a total of 11 years when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002.
Wyeth and Pharmacia & Upjohn have argued at trial that the drugs were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and that known risks have long been included on the drugs' labels.
This article was written Bill Berkrot of Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2326825420091123
If you have experienced advise effects from a defective drug or medicine, please do not hesitate to call our office at 225-928-8800 or visit our website below.
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Showing posts with label defective drugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label defective drugs. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Danish study looks at link between HRT, cancer
CHICAGO, July 14 (Reuters) - Menopausal women who took hormone replacement therapy increased their risk of ovarian cancer by 38 percent, Danish researchers reported on Tuesday.
The study of more than 900,000 Danish women aged 50 to 79 found about one extra ovarian cancer for roughly 8,300 women taking hormone therapy each year.
At the time they got sick, 9 percent of the women were taking hormone therapy, 22 percent were previous users and 63 percent did not take it. The researchers calculated that current hormone use conferred a 38 percent higher risk of contracting the disease compared to non-users over the eight-year study.
Hormone therapy was linked to 140 extra cases of ovarian cancer in Denmark during the eight-year study, accounting for 5 percent of all cases in that period, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Even though this share seems low, ovarian cancer remains highly fatal, so accordingly this risk warrants consideration when deciding whether to use (hormone therapy)," wrote Lina Steinrud Morch and colleagues at Copenhagen University.
The findings were similar to those in the 2002 Women's Health Initiative study, which was stopped early because it found an increased risk of ovarian cancer, breast cancer, strokes and other health problems from hormone therapy or HRT.
HRT use plunged after the WHI study, and sales of U.S. market leader Wyeth's (WYE.N) combined estrogen-progestin therapy Prempro have fallen by 50 percent since 2001 to around $1 billion a year.
For women considering hormone therapy, "family history comes into play, and your own personal medical history certainly comes into play. Those risks have to be discussed with your doctor," said Wyeth's director of global medical affairs, Dr. Corrado Altomare, who was not involved in the Danish study.
The risks of ovarian cancer were about the same from hormone therapy regardless of the duration of use, the formulation of the hormones, the estrogen dose, or how it was administered, according to the study.
As in earlier studies, it found the cancer risk diminished about two years after therapy was stopped.
Ovarian cancer is difficult to detect before it spreads, and therefore is often fatal. Roughly 18 out of 100,000 U.S. women are diagnosed yearly with the disease, which killed 15,000 Americans in 2007, according to government statistics.
What causes cancer cells to appear in the ovaries in the first place is not known, but estrogen is believed to spur tumor growth and may be a trigger.
This post was written by Andrew Stern
http://www.reuters.com/article/euRegulatoryNews/idUSN1426894820090714
If you have suffered adverse side effects from defective medications, do not hesitate to call Murphy Law Firm.
http://www.batonrougeinjuryaccidentattorney.com/defective%20drugs.html
The study of more than 900,000 Danish women aged 50 to 79 found about one extra ovarian cancer for roughly 8,300 women taking hormone therapy each year.
At the time they got sick, 9 percent of the women were taking hormone therapy, 22 percent were previous users and 63 percent did not take it. The researchers calculated that current hormone use conferred a 38 percent higher risk of contracting the disease compared to non-users over the eight-year study.
Hormone therapy was linked to 140 extra cases of ovarian cancer in Denmark during the eight-year study, accounting for 5 percent of all cases in that period, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Even though this share seems low, ovarian cancer remains highly fatal, so accordingly this risk warrants consideration when deciding whether to use (hormone therapy)," wrote Lina Steinrud Morch and colleagues at Copenhagen University.
The findings were similar to those in the 2002 Women's Health Initiative study, which was stopped early because it found an increased risk of ovarian cancer, breast cancer, strokes and other health problems from hormone therapy or HRT.
HRT use plunged after the WHI study, and sales of U.S. market leader Wyeth's (WYE.N) combined estrogen-progestin therapy Prempro have fallen by 50 percent since 2001 to around $1 billion a year.
For women considering hormone therapy, "family history comes into play, and your own personal medical history certainly comes into play. Those risks have to be discussed with your doctor," said Wyeth's director of global medical affairs, Dr. Corrado Altomare, who was not involved in the Danish study.
The risks of ovarian cancer were about the same from hormone therapy regardless of the duration of use, the formulation of the hormones, the estrogen dose, or how it was administered, according to the study.
As in earlier studies, it found the cancer risk diminished about two years after therapy was stopped.
Ovarian cancer is difficult to detect before it spreads, and therefore is often fatal. Roughly 18 out of 100,000 U.S. women are diagnosed yearly with the disease, which killed 15,000 Americans in 2007, according to government statistics.
What causes cancer cells to appear in the ovaries in the first place is not known, but estrogen is believed to spur tumor growth and may be a trigger.
This post was written by Andrew Stern
http://www.reuters.com/article/euRegulatoryNews/idUSN1426894820090714
If you have suffered adverse side effects from defective medications, do not hesitate to call Murphy Law Firm.
http://www.batonrougeinjuryaccidentattorney.com/defective%20drugs.html
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Some Acid-Reflux Drugs Tied to Pneumonia
A growing number of hospital patients are routinely given drugs to prevent acid reflux. But a new study has found that patients who take these so-called proton pump inhibitors are at higher risk for pneumonia than those who do not.
The drugs — including Nexium, Prilosec and Prevacid — are often recommended for intensive-care patients to prevent stress ulcers, and in recent years they have been given to many other hospital patients, in large part because they are widely perceived to be safe. Experts estimate that 40 percent to 70 percent of inpatients now receive acid-suppressive drugs during a hospital stay, with about half receiving them for the first time.
“I noticed that there were a lot of patients being placed on these for prophylactic purposes, and I thought that was curious because they are not currently recommended for patients who aren’t at high risk for stress ulcers,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Shoshana J. Herzig, chief medical resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, explaining why she was interested in the subject.
Dr. Herzig said that proton pump inhibitors, which suppress acid in the stomach, might promote the growth of different types of bacteria in the upper gastrointestinal and respiratory tract, and that those bacteria might be the culprits in the pneumonias. Another explanation, she suggested, may be that acid stimulates coughing, and coughing less may promote pneumonia.
The study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association this week, analyzed 63,878 admissions to Beth Israel Deaconess from Jan. 1, 2004, to Dec. 31, 2007. All of the records belonged to adults hospitalized for three days or more, who had not been in intensive care. Acid-suppressive drugs were ordered for just over half of the patients.
Among patients who received the drugs, 4.9 percent developed pneumonia in the hospital — more than double the 2 percent who had not been given the drugs. After adjusting to account for the fact that recipients of the drugs may have been sicker to begin with, the researchers determined that patients treated with acid-reflux drugs faced a 30 percent increase in pneumonia risk over patients who were not.
The increase in pneumonia was not seen among patients who took a type of acid-reflux drug known as histamine-2 receptor antagonists, sold under names like Pepcid and Zantac.
A spokesman for AstraZeneca, which makes Nexium, also known as “the purple pill,” said the study had limitations and could not definitively show that the drug caused excess pneumonia.
Earlier reports have linked proton pump inhibitors to other complications, including community-acquired pneumonia, hip fractures and diarrhea associated with Clostridium difficile.
Although the drugs are used to prevent stress ulcers, “a lot of people don’t need to be on them in the first place, and they’re sent home on them and stay on them,” said Dr. Joel J. Heidelbaugh of the University of Michigan. He added that such inappropriate use of the drugs drove up the costs of health care.
This article was written by Roni Caryn Rabin of the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/health/27drugs.html?ref=health
The attorneys at Murphy Law Firm represent the victims of defective drugs. The lawyers do not represent drug-manufacturing companies. If you have suffered an illness due to a defective drug, you do not have to be a victim twice. Contact the attorneys at Murphy Law Firm to help you receive compensation for the injuries you have sustained from taking a defective drug. Our lawyers will take the case to trial if necessary.
http://www.batonrougeinjuryaccidentattorney.com/defective%20drugs.html
The drugs — including Nexium, Prilosec and Prevacid — are often recommended for intensive-care patients to prevent stress ulcers, and in recent years they have been given to many other hospital patients, in large part because they are widely perceived to be safe. Experts estimate that 40 percent to 70 percent of inpatients now receive acid-suppressive drugs during a hospital stay, with about half receiving them for the first time.
“I noticed that there were a lot of patients being placed on these for prophylactic purposes, and I thought that was curious because they are not currently recommended for patients who aren’t at high risk for stress ulcers,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Shoshana J. Herzig, chief medical resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, explaining why she was interested in the subject.
Dr. Herzig said that proton pump inhibitors, which suppress acid in the stomach, might promote the growth of different types of bacteria in the upper gastrointestinal and respiratory tract, and that those bacteria might be the culprits in the pneumonias. Another explanation, she suggested, may be that acid stimulates coughing, and coughing less may promote pneumonia.
The study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association this week, analyzed 63,878 admissions to Beth Israel Deaconess from Jan. 1, 2004, to Dec. 31, 2007. All of the records belonged to adults hospitalized for three days or more, who had not been in intensive care. Acid-suppressive drugs were ordered for just over half of the patients.
Among patients who received the drugs, 4.9 percent developed pneumonia in the hospital — more than double the 2 percent who had not been given the drugs. After adjusting to account for the fact that recipients of the drugs may have been sicker to begin with, the researchers determined that patients treated with acid-reflux drugs faced a 30 percent increase in pneumonia risk over patients who were not.
The increase in pneumonia was not seen among patients who took a type of acid-reflux drug known as histamine-2 receptor antagonists, sold under names like Pepcid and Zantac.
A spokesman for AstraZeneca, which makes Nexium, also known as “the purple pill,” said the study had limitations and could not definitively show that the drug caused excess pneumonia.
Earlier reports have linked proton pump inhibitors to other complications, including community-acquired pneumonia, hip fractures and diarrhea associated with Clostridium difficile.
Although the drugs are used to prevent stress ulcers, “a lot of people don’t need to be on them in the first place, and they’re sent home on them and stay on them,” said Dr. Joel J. Heidelbaugh of the University of Michigan. He added that such inappropriate use of the drugs drove up the costs of health care.
This article was written by Roni Caryn Rabin of the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/health/27drugs.html?ref=health
The attorneys at Murphy Law Firm represent the victims of defective drugs. The lawyers do not represent drug-manufacturing companies. If you have suffered an illness due to a defective drug, you do not have to be a victim twice. Contact the attorneys at Murphy Law Firm to help you receive compensation for the injuries you have sustained from taking a defective drug. Our lawyers will take the case to trial if necessary.
http://www.batonrougeinjuryaccidentattorney.com/defective%20drugs.html
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