Indiana plaintiff couple Jacqueline and Kenneth K. are suing Pfizer Inc. for the injuries Jacqueline allegedly incurred from ingesting Lipitor. Jacqueline claims that as a direct result of ingesting the cholesterol-lowering medication, she developed type-2 diabetes.

For over a decade, Jacqueline had faithfully followed prescription instructions and physician advice in taking Lipitor, in the hopes of preventing heart disease, she explains in her Lipitor diabetes lawsuit. 

Ideally, she would have lived a healthier and longer life with the help of Lipitor, which encouraged a healthy diet and regular exercise.

Unfortunately, this was proven not to be the case when the plaintiff was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes in 2001. She was first prescribed Lipitor the same year, when it was found her cholesterol levels were high. She was prescribed Lipitor in order to lower her cholesterol levels and hopefully prevent developing heart disease, according to the Lipitor lawsuit.

It was only recently that Jacqueline and her husband became aware of Lipitor’s link with type-2 diabetes, which is the reason she stopped taking Lipitor in July 2012.

Earlier that year, Pfizer had finally updated Lipitor’s warning to include information about the possibility of blood-sugar level changes, which indicates type-2 diabetes. While this was an improvement on the label’s warning to medical experts, many consumers still complain that the label’s language is medically ambiguous and difficult to understand.

However, even if that language had been available to Jacqueline at the time in 2001, her lawyer claims that she still would have been vulnerable because the company made no effort to notify her or other consumers.

At no point in time did the defendant company point out this correlation to her physician, or point out any relevant study. Jacqueline insists that she never would have ingested Lipitor if she had known about the possibility of type-2 diabetes.

And now she is at a higher risk of developing heart disease, neuropathy, and blindness; she also must take a variety of medications, see the doctor regularly, adhere to a strict diet, and take frequent blood tests because of the diabetes.

For being allegedly responsible for manufacturing, selling, distributing, and marketing a dangerous drug, Jacqueline and her husband are suing Pfizer Inc. The charges include: negligence, false advertising, concealing information, and misrepresenting a product.

This Lipitor Lawsuit is In re: Lipitor (Atorvastatin Calcium) Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, MDL 2502, in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, Charleston Division.

Overview of Lipitor Complications

Lipitor has been helping Americans lower their bad cholesterol levels since it was approved in 1996, and has since become the best-selling drug in pharmaceutical history. It is manufactured by Pfizer and belongs to a popular group of other cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, which take up a majority of prescriptions written per year in the United States.

Lipitor and other statin drugs’ popularity stems from the fact that these drugs not only lower bad cholesterol levels, but also encourages the production of good cholesterol. Ideally, these drugs prevent heart disease and strokes in high risk patients.

Unfortunately, Lipitor has been recently accused of causing type-2 diabetes to occur in patients, especially in women. This association was first brought up in 2012, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that Lipitor and other statin drugs may increase the risk of type-2 diabetes in patients, and required that all manufacturing companies update their statin warnings.

Related scientific studies suggest that this risk may be highest in postmenopausal women and increases if the drug is used for more than one year.

While experts are unsure as to what may be causing this Lipitor side effect, experts believe that it is linked to the body’s metabolic process. Specifically, some experts believe that Liptior impairs certain cells in the pancreas, which are responsible for storing and releasing insulin. Without this biological regulation, the body’s blood-sugar levels rise and lower dramatically, which causes a variety of potential health complications.