A Louisiana woman is suing Pfizer Inc. for the injuries she allegedly suffered from Lipitor, alleging she developed type-2 diabetes as a result of ingesting the medication.

Prior to taking Lipitor, Brenda Fields was at a healthy weight and maintained a healthy exercised routine.  She had been prescribed Lipitor in June 2008 by her doctors when her cholesterol was rising. To decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, she agreed to the medication. At the time, the plaintiff had been relying on the claims Pfizer made regarding Lipitor’s efficiency in lowering cholesterol and preventing heart disease.

In 2013, after several years of taking the medication, Fields was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes. In light of her new diabetic condition, Fields had to readjust to life from her diagnosis. She now must take a variety of medications, follow a strict diabetic diet, and undergo regular blood tests to monitor her blood-sugar levels.  Additionally, she is now at higher risk of developing heart disease, which was the condition Lipitor was supposed to prevent.

It was only recently that Fields learned that Lipitor has a correlation with type-2 diabetes. There were no warnings or indications on the product’s label, nor had the company make any effort to notify her or her physicians, according to the Lipitor lawsuit.  Fields states that Pfizer had the responsibility to warn her and other patients of this and other side effects, because she was relying on the given information at the time.

The Lipitor lawsuit accuses Pfizer of negligence, false advertising, concealing information, and misrepresenting a product.

The above Lipitor lawsuit is Brenda Fields vs. Pfizer Inc., Case 2:14-cv-00165-EEF-KWR, in the United States District Court of Eastern Louisiana.

Overview of Lipitor Complications

Lipitor (Atorvastatin) is manufactured and sold by Pfizer as a cholesterol-treatment medication.  Lipitor is a part of the statin drug family, and is a HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor, which prevents the absorption of bad cholesterol.  The drug has also been known to increase the production of good cholesterol, and encourage improved metabolic function. It was first approved by the FDA in 1996, and has since then become the best-selling drug in pharmaceutical history.  While the public and medical experts agree that the drug is efficient, it has been recently discovered that the drug may be causing severe and dangerous reactions.

Millions of men and women who are on Lipitor are in danger of developing type-2 diabetes.  It is currently unknown what causes this. Studies and injury reports have indicated that patients who take Lipitor and other statin drugs are almost twice as likely to develop type-2 diabetes as those using other cholesterol-treatment drugs. Pfizer allegedly knew about this complication but  deliberately kept it under warps in order to preserve the drug’s high status on the market.

It was not until February 2012 that Pfizer officially admitted that there was correlation between Lipitor and the development of type-2 diabetes. After receiving numerous injury reports and a request from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Pfizer changed Lipitor’s drug label to include that the drug may change the patient’s blood-sugar levels, but does not explicitly mention type-2 diabetes.

This failure to warn has led to dozens of Lipitor lawsuits and a Lipitor class action lawsuit investigation against Pfizer. People who join the Lipitor class action lawsuit claim they were never warned about the risk of developing type-2 diabetes from Lipitor.