A new Lipitor study has emerged which may have bearing on the Lipitor diabetes lawsuits. This new study suggests a dose-dependant link between the use of Lipitor and related drugs and developing type-2 diabetes.

Lipitor is a drug designed to help control blood cholesterol. It belongs to a class of drugs called statins that alter the amount of LDL or “bad” cholesterol the body produces. However, studies have found an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes associated with the drug.

Lipitor diabetes lawsuits have been filed by individuals who developed diabetes after taking the drug. This latest study supports the idea that the drug can cause diabetes, and expands on the the idea.

This latest Lipitor study was published in the June issue of the peer-reviewed medical journal Diabetes Care. In this study, researchers used medical data collected from more than 115,500 patients in the Lombardy region of Italy. The study compared the rate in which they took the drug to their risk of developing type-2 diabetes.

The researchers divided the individuals’ compliance levels with their rate of developing type-2 diabetes. A patients’ compliance is how reliably they took the drug. As that increased, their risk of developing type-2 diabetes increased lockstep.

For example, the study’s authors found that patients who did not consistently take Lipitor or other statins had a 12 percent greater risk of developing diabetes compared to people who never took statins. When patients had a medium level of compliance, they were 22 percent more likely to have a type-2 diabetes diagnosis than those not taking statins. The patients that most reliably took their Lipitor suffered from the highest rates of type-2 diabetes at 33 percent.

In science, there is an idea that correlation does not mean causation. This is the idea that just because two events follow each other closely, it does not always mean that one causes the other.

However, when multiple studies find a similar link, it increases the credibility of such a link. Dose-dependence is a pattern seen in medical research, the idea that people who take more of a drug have more pronounced effects from it. Observing a dose-dependant relationship between a drug and an alleged side effect is generally considered strong evidence that a drug is causing an effect. This, coupled with earlier studies, strongly suggests that Lipitor and related drugs can trigger type-2 diabetes.

Lipitor diabetes lawsuits have alleged that not only is there a link between type-2 diabetes and Lipitor, but that the makers of the drug have deliberately concealed this risk. The Lipitor lawsuits also allege that this is primarily a Lipitor side effect for women.

One piece of evidence that has frequently come up in Lipitor diabetes lawsuits is that when the FDA mandated changes to Lipitor’s labeling, the drug’s manufacturers included medical terminology describing increased glucose levels, and never actually uses the word diabetes.

Several of the Lipitor diabetes lawsuits have been consolidated into a multidistrict litigation (MDL) or mass tort.

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