Personal Injury Law

AstraZeneca's Hidden Information On Seroquel

By Jamie Sheller

AstraZeneca is being sued by thousands of people claiming that the company did not adequately warn about the risk of diabetes linked to its drug Seroquel. Documents unsealed in the consolidated trial of many Seroquel claims, showed that AstraZeneca cherry-picked data to publish about the risks of Seroquel. In addition, a 2002 letter from AstraZeneca was also recently unsealed, and in the letter AstraZeneca warned Japanese doctors about Seroquel's diabetes risk. In the letter, Japanese doctors were advised not to prescribe Seroquel to diabetics and to make sure that patients' blood-sugar levels were monitored. However, in 2005, three years after the warning letter to Japanese doctors, AstraZeneca sales representatives were told to tell U.S. doctors that no causal link had been established between Seroquel and diabetes, and to redirect doctors away from the issue of diabetes. AstraZeneca had sales of $4.45 billion dollars in 2008 for Seroquel, its second-biggest selling drug. Seroquel is an antipsychotic medication.

Full post as published by Philadelphia Personal Injury Lawyer on March 04, 2009 (boomark / ).