In a new lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on Aug. 1, 2018, Taxotere—a drug used to treat metastatic breast cancer in women—has been accused of causing permanent chemo hair loss in the plaintiff.

The complainant, plaintiff Donna B., is a citizen and resident of the State of Florida and joins multidistrict litigation No. 2740 with this action. This MDL is an aggregate of other Taxotere product liability lawsuits with similar claims of disfiguring and permanent chemo hair loss.

Donna claims she was administered Taxotere—also known generically as docetaxel—in the state of Florida between May 13 through Aug. 30, 2011. She was prescribed this treatment by her supervising oncologist, who she claims relied upon all side effect warnings provided by the manufacturing defendants—Sanofi U.S. Services Inc. and Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC.

Donna says there was no indication that chemo hair loss of a long-lasting or permanent nature should be expected from this breast cancer course of treatment.

She says she suffered chemo hair loss after being administered with Taxotere according to directions. As with other drugs of this nature, this would be expected for a period of time after which her hair should have grown back.

Donna says in her Taxotere lawsuit that she suffers from a type of permanent chemo hair loss known as alopecia. Her alopecia continues to the present day, she claims, nearly seven years after ending Taxotere breast cancer treatment.

The plaintiff is bringing six counts against the defendants in her lawsuit including Strict Products Liability—Failure to Warn, Negligence, Negligent Misrepresentation, Fraudulent Concealment, and Fraud and Deceit.

She is asking for compensatory and general damages that include consideration for medical expenses, loss of earning power, mental and emotional anguish secondary to disfigurement, and all costs of litigation.

Taxotere History and Studies

Taxotere was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the 1990’s. It was acknowledged to be a much stronger version than similarly comprised Taxol, so the drug oversight agency encouraged physicians to limit its use.

The agency felt that it should be given to women whose cancer had spread from a localized region thorough a process known as metastases. It was hoped that sufferers with cancer in a localized region would be prescribed other, less toxic options.

Toward the end of the decade, the Sanofi defendants paid for a long-range study called GEICAM 9805. Five years later, the data being generated by the study revealed a disturbing 10 percent of women with chemo hair loss being treated by Taxotere failed to grow their hair back.

Other than GEICAM 9805, there were other metric indicators that the breast cancer treatment was not performing with any greater effectiveness that its chief market competitor drug Taxol. Information from both performance measurement and the GEICAM study was allegedly withheld from the public and medical professional community.