Pfizer Inc. continues to face a barrage of product liability lawsuits claiming its blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor causes women to develop type-2 diabetes. The latest Lipitor lawsuit comes from Oklahoma plaintiff Barbara M., who claims she never would have taken the drug if she had known this risk.

Lipitor is prescribed to patients with high cholesterol and are at higher risk of developing heart disease. Barbara says she was no different, and was encouraged by her physician to take Lipitor to stay within her healthy life-style. Prior to taking Lipitor, the plaintiff showed no sign of type-2 diabetes or heart problems, the Lipitor lawsuit claims.

Barbara alleges she faithfully followed the instructions for taking Lipitor from when she began taking the medication in 1998 up until she ended it sometime in May 2014. She had stayed on the medication for decades, believing it was helping her maintain her active lifestyle and was preventing any chances of heart disease, the Lipitor lawsuit says.

The plaintiff was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes on Nov. 27, 2007 but continued taking Lipitor for several more years because she was unaware of the possible correlation between her diagnosis and her use of Lipitor. Now she is one of thousands of women in the United States who allegedly developed type-2 diabetes while taking Lipitor and is taking legal action against Pfizer.

Like many of the other plaintiffs who filed Lipitor diabetes lawsuits, Barbara states that she and her physician were given no warning of this possible Lipitor side effect until the FDA made this link known two years previously. Barbara claims Pfizer made no effort to notify her or her physician of the risk of Lipitor diabetes and had not updated Lipitor’s label to indicate type-2 diabetes as a potential side effect until required by the FDA.

The Lipitor diabetes lawsuits states that Pfizer had the civil responsibility to warn Barbara and other consumers of this possible Lipitor side effect before the FDA announcement, because the public was relying on the accuracy of the drug warning information provided by Pfizer. Barbara insists that she never would have taken Lipitor if she had known about the risk of developing type-2 diabetes from Lipitor.

Barbara is suing Pfizer for manufacturing, selling, distributing, and marketing an allegedly dangerous drug. The charges include: negligence, false advertising, concealing information, and misrepresenting a product.

Her Lipitor diabetes lawsuit was filed using a short-form complaint directly into the Liptior mass tort with thousands of other Lipitor diabetes lawsuits are currently pending.

The Lipitor mass tort is called In Re: Lipitor (Atorvastatin Calcium) Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2502, in the U.S. District Court of South Carolina, Charleston Division.

Overview of Lipitor Complications

Lipitor is the most popular drug in the statin pharmaceutical family, and is the best-selling medication in pharmaceutical history. Pfizer  gained the FDA’s approval for Lipitor in 1996.

In recent years, Lipitor has gained both mass support for its cholesterol-lowering capabilities and massive criticism for its alleged association with type-2 diabetes. Thousands of women across the country are suing Pfizer for allegedly failing to protect them against against diabetes by failing to include this potential Lipitor side effect in the drug warning literature.

Type-2 diabetes is a permanent condition in which the patient’s body is unable to manufacture an adequate amount of insulin. This throws the patient’s body chemistry out of order, leading to a wide variety of further medical problems.

Lipitor users who develop diabetes often go from living an average life to suddenly having to take multiple medications, submit to regular blood tests, receive insulin shots, follow a strict diet, and regularly visit the doctor. Furthermore, type-2 diabetes puts patients at a higher risk for heart disease, which is the condition Lipitor is supposed to prevent.

As of now, medical experts are unsure as to what may be causing this reaction but many theorize that Lipitor and other statin drugs may cause harm to certain key enzymes in the pancreas, which stores and releases insulin. Regardless of how Lipitor diabetes occurs, it has been indicated to have happened in thousands of women, which ultimately resulted in the mass Liptior diabetes litigation Pfizer is now facing.