An increasing number of patients are suffering from Benicar side effects that point to a link between the blood-pressure medication and sprue-like enteropathy.

A recent case study featured a 52-year-old woman prescribed Benicar to treat her hypertension who suffered a weight loss of 45 pounds in six months. She had to be hospitalized for severe abdominal pain and nausea. The case study noted that she had not been around anyone who was sick, had no changes in her diet, and was not on new medications.

Her vital signs were presented as normal to the physicians during the physical exam except for severe tenderness in her abdomen and signs of dehydration. The woman suffered a heart attack in the emergency room, and was admitted to the intensive care unit. A CT scan of her colon revealed that it was inflamed and seemed to have signs of perforation. After seeing the CT scan, doctors did not perform surgery due to the risk of further colon damage and instead focused on finding the root of her chronic diarrhea.

After celiac disease was ruled out, the doctors noticed that her symptoms began after she started using Benicar. Despite being on Benicar for three years, the doctors suspected it to be the cause and took her off it, and replaced it with Lisinopril. Within a month, she reportedly felt no more abdominal pain and experienced no diarrhea, and made a full recovery five months later.

After examining this case, the doctors stated the Benicar-induced enteropathy can be identified from the absence of transglutaminase tissue and endomysial and antienterocyte antibodies, and a misdiagnosis of celiac disease could allow Benicar side effects to cause serious damage in the patient’s gastrointestinal tract.

Overview of Benicar Complications

Benicar (olmesartan) is a popular hypertension medication. It is manufactured by the Japanese pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo and its American partner Forest Laboratories. Despite its popularity, recent studies have linked this medication to causing various gastrointestinal complications including:

• Severe and chronic diarrhea
• Substantial weight loss
• Electrolyte imbalance
• Sprue-like enteropathy
• Villous atrophy

These problems in July 2013 resulted in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) releasing a drug safety warning regarding the side effects of Benicar, stating that Benicar and related drugs could cause severe intestinal damage. The authors of the FDA report described these Benicar side effects as “life-threatening,” stating that more than half of the Benicar patients had to be hospitalized due to extreme weight loss. Many are misdiagnosed with celiac disease because the symptoms closely mimic them.

Despite the severity and frequency of this problem, Daiichi Sankyo did not update Benicar’s label to include these complications until July 2013. This led to the Benicar side effects lawsuits. These lawsuits also accuse the company of failing to take adequate precautions to protect their consumers, and for failing to properly communicate these warnings to the medical community.