West Virginia plaintiff Charlotte T. Kearnes is suing Pfizer Inc. for the injuries she allegedly sustained from Lipitor.  Kearnes alleges that she developed permanent and serious injuries, including type-2 diabetes, as a result of ingesting the cholesterol medication.

Kearnes was first prescribed Lipitor by her doctor in 2005 to help control her high cholesterol.  Ideally, the plaintiff would have been allowed to live a healthier and longer life because the drug would help prevent cardiac disease and stroke.

Instead, Kearnes found herself diagnosed with type-2 diabetes four years later. Kearnes is now more vulnerable to heart disease, stroke, neuropathy, blindness and other complications, her lawsuit states, and must now follow a regimented medication schedule and adhere to a strict diet.

Kearnes did not learn about the possibility of type-2 diabetes from Lipitor until sometime after she ceased her medication.  In her Lipitor lawsuit, Kearnes states that Pfizer had the responsibility to warn her of this complication because she was relying on the accuracy of the given information at the time.

Instead, there were no warnings or clear indications on the drug’s warning label to indicate the risk of getting diabetes from Lipitor, and the defendant company had made no effort to notify her, the lawsuit says.  Kearnes states that if she had known about this possibility she never would have taken the medication.

Kearnes is suing Pfizer for being directly responsible for manufacturing, selling, distributing, and marketing a dangerous drug. The charges include negligence, false advertising, concealing information, and misrepresenting a product.

The Lipitor diabetes lawsuit is  Kearnes vs. Pfizer Inc., Case No. 3:2013cv00154, in the United States District Court of Northern West Virginia, Martinsburg.

Overview of Lipitor Complications

Lipitor (Atorvastatin) is a cholesterol-lowering medication that has been manufactured by Pfizer since the mid 1990’s.  It is the best-selling drug in pharmaceutical history, garnering millions of prescriptions each year, earning Pfizer billions.  Most of these patients use Lipitor to lower their cholesterol, in order to prevent high blood pressure and the cardiac complications.  Ideally, if used alongside diet and exercise, Lipitor would allow the patients to live a longer, healthier, and active life.  However, recent reports have indicated that Lipitor could possibility be causing type-2 diabetes in some patients.

As of now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is unsure what exactly triggers this reaction, but the common correlations seems to be when the patients uses the drug for more than one year, and most of the victims seem to be postmenopausal woman.

Lipitor is a member of the widely-known family called statins, which is the most widely prescribed drug class in the United States.  Statins are used for a wide variety of medical conditions, so it is quite alarming that their most popular member could cause such a disturbance.   Additionally, many medical experts are concerned that such a contradiction could occur from such a popular medication, due to the wide patient populous which willingly exposes itself to the drug.

A study published in the British Medical Journal, detailed a study that Canadian researchers conducted which compared the possibility of developing type-2 diabetes after using statin drugs.  Five of the most popular statins were used in this study, including Lipitor.  More than 470,000 patents were observed, and researchers found that the patients who had used Lipitor and Crestor had an increased likelihood of developing typ-2 diabetes by 22% and 18%, respectively.

Despite this, and other scientific studies, Pfizer did not update Lipitor’s warning label to include type-2 diabetes association until February 2012. Even with the updated label, it does not explicitly state that this medication may cause type-2 diabetes.