Robert J. Boumis  |  November 26, 2014

Category: Legal News

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Lipitor diabetes lawsuitAs with many areas of medicine, drugs like Lipitor carry both risks and benefits. While Lipitor can lower blood cholesterol levels, it may also increase the risk of type-2 diabetes.

As doctors struggle to create guidelines to balance risk and reward, the makers of the drug face lawsuits over the alleged risk of Lipitor diabetes.

In 2013, the American College of Cardiology, along with the American Heart Association, put out new guidelines for prescribing statins, the class of cholesterol-regulating drugs that include Lipitor. The new guidelines would greatly expand the number of Americans on Lipitor and similar cholesterol drugs.

But several studies have suggested that these drugs can increase the risk of developing type-2 diabetes. These studies collected data from hundreds of thousands of people, and found that patients taking Lipitor had an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes.

The studies had sufficient data to consider the possibility that other factors, called cofounders, were interfering with the data and creating a false correlation. Despite testing for these possible cofounders, researchers found strong evidence that Lipitor could increase the risk of type-2 diabetes. Researchers found this effect was most pronounced in older women.

Type-2 diabetes is a disorder in which the patient’s body loses the ability to control the amount of sugar or glucose in the blood. Though cells need glucose to survive, excessive glucose can build to toxic level in diabetics, causing cell death and tissue damage.

This can manifest as kidney damage, blindness, or necrosis. Necrosis is cell-death, which promotes gangrene. This is why many diabetics have to have fingers, toes, or even hands and feet amputated in extreme cases. There is no cure for type-2 diabetes and once someone is diagnosed, they have to make major lifestyle changes to manage their condition.

The week after the new statin/Lipitor guidelines came out, two Harvard physicians came out against the new guidelines, saying it would lead to excessive use of Lipitor, and possibly cases of Lipitor diabetes. The controversy led to further review of the guidelines by the ACC and the AHA.

In the meantime, there have been a host of Lipitor diabetes lawsuits. More than a thousand Lipitor diabetes lawsuits have been filed against Pfizer, the drug’s manufacturer. These lawsuits allege that Pfizer was aware of the risk of type-2 diabetes, or reasonably should have been aware of it.

So many lawsuits were filed they were grouped together in a multidistrict litigation. These lawsuits further allege that Pfizer did not do enough to protect the public from the risk of type-2 diabetes, endangering he public and leading to plaintiffs’ type-2 diabetes.

The Lipitor Diabetes MDL is In re: Lipitor (Atorvastatin Calcium) Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation (No. II), MDL No. 2502, in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina.

Do YOU have a legal claim? Fill out the form on this page now for a free, immediate, and confidential case evaluation. The Lipitor attorneys who work with Top Class Actions will contact you if you qualify to let you know if an individual lawsuit or Lipitor class action lawsuit is best for you. [In general, Lipitor lawsuits are filed individually by each plaintiff and are not class actions.] Hurry — statutes of limitations may apply.

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