A Louisiana woman says her Benicar GI injuries could have been avoided with a better warning from drug maker Daiichi Sankyo.

Plaintiff Phillis F. says she started taking Benicar and Benicar HCT sometime in 2007. She claims her treatment with Benicar caused her to suffer serious Benicar GI injuries.

Her Benicar lawsuit alleges she suffered from “villous atrophy, sprue-like enteropathy, colitis, kidney failure, malabsorption, malnutrition, dehydration, atrophy, and/or symptoms of diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, abdominal pain, and/or other related symptoms.”

Plaintiffs Blame Benicar GI Injuries on Daiichi, Forest

By now, many patients who use Benicar or its related medications to control hypertension have gotten the news about the risk of Benicar GI injuries.

In July 2013, the FDA issued a drug safety communication announcing a label change for Benicar and other drugs that use the active ingredient olmesartan.

The agency warned patients and their doctors that several patients taking olmesartan had suffered from a gastrointestinal condition known as sprue-like enteropathy.

The trademark symptoms of sprue-like enteropathy are severe and chronic diarrhea and associated extreme weight loss.

Patients can also develop villous atrophy, a condition in which the inner surface of the intestine erodes away. Villous atrophy can impair the absorption of nutrients from food, causing malnutrition.

According to the FDA, almost two dozen serious cases of sprue-like enteropathy or symptoms matching its description were reported to its adverse event reporting system.

In each of those cases, the patients had been taking an olmesartan-based medication. All patients’ symptoms improved after they ceased taking olmesartan.

Scientific studies show results consistent with what the FDA found in these reports. Case studies tell the stories of patients who lost twenty, twenty-five or more pounds in just a few weeks once the symptoms of Benicar GI injuries set in.

However, despite the availability of all this evidence, patients say the makers of Benicar have failed to properly address the link between Benicar and gastrointestinal symptoms with a proper warning for patients and doctors.

Several patients like Phillis believe the warnings in the labeling and patient information materials that accompany Benicar and other olmesartan-based drugs didn’t adequately warn them about the real risks they face.

Like Phillis, many of these patients have since become plaintiffs in Benicar lawsuits seeking compensation from Daiichi Sankyo and Forest Laboratories, the drug’s manufacturers and promoters.

Plaintiffs say that Daiichi and Forest Labs improperly promoted Benicar as a safe and effective way to treat hypertension, while downplaying the drug’s gastrointestinal side effects.

They allege that if they had been properly informed about the risk of gastrointestinal symptoms, they never would have taken Benicar in the first place.

In addition to Benicar, other olmesartan drugs that are being implicated in these Benicar lawsuits include Benicar HCT, Azor, and Tribenzor. These drugs are combinations of olmesartan with other cardiovascular drugs.

Phillis’s Benicar Lawsuit is Case No. 1:16-cv-09295 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. It’s part of the Benicar MDL, In re: Benicar (Olmesartan) Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2606, also in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.