A woman who was administered Taxotere for the treatment of breast cancer just filed a lawsuit against the drug’s manufacturer claiming that she sustained chemotherapy alopecia, or permanent hair loss, after using this drug.

Plaintiff Serena S., currently a resident of the state of North Carolina, registered her claim against Sanofi U.S. Services Inc. and Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC on January 23, 2019, in U.S. District Court in Louisiana.

Serena is among thousands treated for metastatic breast cancer with Taxotere who have alleged chemotherapy alopecia as an undisclosed side effect. Serena and other complainants’ legal claims have been organized under Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) No. 2740 and transferred to the Eastern District of Louisiana for efficient adjudication due to the similarity of product liability claims.

The complainant in this case says she was treated for a three-month period while living in Texas between early January 2011 through mid-April 2011. She is accusing the defendants of failing to warn about the possibility of developing chemotherapy alopecia, of negligently and fraudulently misrepresenting Taxotere’s benefits apart from side effects, of fraudulently concealing its potentially disfiguring adverse effects, and of negligence, fraud, and deceit.

Risks of Taxotere

According to a Drug Safety News article posted in July 2018, the data from a United Kingdom (UK) study in 2013 revealed that 15 percent of women treated with Taxotere develop chemotherapy alopecia.

The author alleges that the psychological and social impact of this side effect is so great that it might very well impact overall long-term survival rates of the patients involved with this kind of treatment.

Additionally, the author reports that Sanofi warned about irreversible chemotherapy alopecia on the drug’s packaging label in the U.K. and Canada as early as 2005, but failed to do so on the U.S. label until 2015, ten years later.

Purportedly, the defendant’s own internal studies revealed a three percent chance of permanent hair loss occurring which—in their mind—didn’t require extraordinary efforts to warn in the U.S. Independently undertaken studies returned data which doubled that percentage to six percent.

Patient supporters argue that Sanofi should have warned of this side effect, so that a patient could have made a fully informed decision about their health from the beginning. Women say they should not have been left to struggle with the emotional burden of their chemotherapy alopecia after being completely surprised by it.

The way Taxotere is administered may have some effects on whether a patient develops permanent hair loss. Other drugs used in combination with Taxotere, adriamycin and cyclophosphamide, reportedly can push patients into a higher risk category for developing long term baldness secondary to their cancer treatment.

As of mid-July 2018, 8,700 patients treated with Taxotere for breast cancer have filed lawsuits for permanent hair loss. The first bellwether trial is set to be heard by Judge Jane Milazzo in May 2019 in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

The Taxotere Alopecia Lawsuit is Case No. 2:19-cv-00488-JTM-MBN in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.