Avandia Class Action Lawyers

Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) widely prescribed oral diabetes drug, has been identified as a possible cause of heart attacks and other heart problems in patients with diabetes, stirring up a storm of controversy about the FDA ‘s (Food and Drug Administration) practices in approving drugs and monitoring drug safety.

A new study containing a meta-analysis of previous studies of Avandia was published in the online version of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on May 21, 2007. The analysis showed that Avandia created a significant risk of increased heart attacks and other heart problems in patients with diabetes.

The study produced predicted results, and lawsuits for serious personal injury and wrongful death cause by taking Avandia began to be filed in 2007. For example, the family of a nurse who required 3 bypass operations and finally died of a stroke, filed suit against GSK. The family claimed that GSK had information about the dangers of Avandia that it withheld.

One of the primary issues in Avandia litigation will be whether the manufacturer, GSK, responsibly reported all the dangers of Avandia to the FDA and to the public. A few U.S. legislators have already raised concerns about GSK’s honesty in this area. GSK has a bad record on safety reporting; it settled a lawsuit filed by then New York Attorney General, and now New York Governor, Eliot Spitzer, in which Spitzer charged GSK with fraudulently withholding results about the safety of prescribing the antidepressant Paxil to children. Part of that settlement was the agreement that GSK would set up the website that the NEJM authors used to obtain much of their data.