Uloric (febuxostat) is a common drug used to treat gout, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2009. Gout is a type of arthritis that occurs when there is uric acid buildup in a joint. Symptoms of gout are redness, swelling, and severe pain.

Drugs like Uloric improve gout by lowering the uric acid levels in the blood.

Claims have already been made that the drug’s manufacturer, Takeda, intentionally hid severe, and in some cases fatal, Uloric side effects the drug from the federal government. Additionally, patient reports have shown that the drug is linked to heart-related death and other serious conditions. If the drug company is found guilty of wrongdoing, it could be liable for consumer injury.

Questions of Uloric Safety

Clinical trials used in the approval of the drug showed that patients who took the Uloric were at an elevated risk for heart attacks, strokes, and heart-related deaths. Studies compared this drug to allopurinol, another gout drug, which is sold under brand names Zyloprim and Aloprim, to determine Uloric’s safety. This study showed that patients who took Uloric had a higher risk of dying of a heart condition than those that took Zyloprim or Aloprim.

Though these risk were included on the warning label of the drug, the FDA required Takeda to perform an additional study after the drug was released, in order to more fully explore the mortality and heart condition risk related to the drug. Despite this additional research, claims were still made that Takeda was hiding information from the government about the nature and severity of Uloric’s side effects.

In 2012, a former Takeda safety consultant filed a whistleblower lawsuit claiming that Takeda hid information from the government when seeking approval for Uloric. The whistleblower lawsuit alleged that Takeda concealed evidence that Uloric could be fatal when combined with drugs like digoxin, imuran, methadone, and warfarin. Allegedly, the concealment of this information led to some patient deaths.

The Takeda whistleblower lawsuit also alleged that Takeda intentionally did not disclose severe Uloric side effects including bone marrow failure, severe bleeding, and kidney failure. Additionally, the whistleblower lawsuit claimed that Takeda defrauded Medicare and Medicaid because many patients were prescribed Uloric, which costs $5.00 per day, when they could have been treated effectively with allopurinol, which costs 10 cents a day.

Patients rely on the information presented by drug companies, as well as on FDA information, to make decisions about what drugs to take. A large portion of this decision-making process is weighing the side effects with potential benefits of taking the drug. When a drug company lies about the side effects of a drug, they prevent patients from being able to make informed decisions about their medical care, and can put them at risk for serious, possibly fatal side effects.

Lawyers are now investigating Uloric side effects, including heart-related deaths. If you or a loved one suffered heart complications after taking Uloric, you may have a legal claim. Joining a Uloric lawsuit could help gain compensation for physical, emotional, and financial injury caused by the drug.