Another Legal Battle for GlaxoSmithKline
GlaxoSmithKline faces yet another legal battle, after an Oklahoma man filed a lawsuit claiming Avandia, a popular diabetes medication caused him to experience heart problems that required bypass surgery. The plaintiff alleges in the lawsuit that GlaxoSmithKline should have known that Avandia was linked with a substantial increased danger of heart failure, heart attack, stroke, and additional side effects.
The lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania and is among numerous filed across the United States targeting Avandia and its manufacturer. Avandia, which has been on the market since 1999, helps improve blood sugar regulation in type 2 diabetes patients.
Nancy Pekarek, spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline, said the company stands by Avandia and will defend against any litigation. “We are certainly confident that when the courts or the juries look at the clinical data, the responsible way in which we communicated that information, and our openness in posting our clinical trial data online, they will see our position,” she said.
The plaintiff states he took Avandia because it was peddled as a lifestyle drug where he wouldn’t have to take insulin. Instead, the plaintiff says, the drug led to painful heart trouble and eventual heart bypass surgery in 2007.
The lawsuit alleges that GlaxoSmithKline had the knowledge, the means and the duty to provide the medical community and the consuming public with more accurate descriptive information and more adequate warnings regarding the association between Avandia and heart failure.”
Sales of Avandia have dropped in the United States since a report last May by the New England Journal of Medicine that linked the drug to an increased risk of heart attacks.