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Actos Lawsuits Piling Up
Serving Alabama, Mississippi & Florida including Mobile, Pascagoula, Gulfport, Biloxi & Pensacola
Thu, 10/20/2011
As I recently indicated, the maker of the world's best-selling diabetes drug is being inundated with lawsuits as recent suspicions grow that taking the pill for more than a year increases the risk of bladder cancer. In June, Takeda Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd. halted sales of Actos in Germany and France after regulators began to pressure the company about the cancer risk. Afterwards, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have come out with warnings as a result of new research, but they allowed the drug to stay on the market. Doctors have been warned not to prescribe Actos for patients with bladder cancer or who have experienced the cancer in the past.
These warnings could prove fatal to the drug that has been on the market for more than a decade. Actos became the top diabetes drug after Avandia was determined to increase the risk of heart attacks in 2007. Actos sales rose from $2.9 billion in 2006 to more than $4.3 billion last year.
Lawsuits have now been filed across the country alleging that Actos caused bladder cancer which, in some cases, proved to be fatal. Lawyers for Takeda recently indicated in Court filings that 54 lawsuits have been filed to date. In the FDA's analysis of the drug, they did an interim review of the first five years of data from a 10 year safety study begun in 2002 and found that the risk of bladder cancer was 40 percent higher for patients taking Actos for at least a year. Takeda was hoping two experimental drugs in their pipeline would succeed Actos and replace lost sales when the patent expires in 2012. That plan now appears to be doomed.
If you took Actos for more than a year and developed bladder cancer please contact us. Our defective drug attorneys are representing many clients who have developed cancer as a result of taking this drug and we intend to see that they and their families are compensated for the injuries they have suffered.
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