San Francisco Injury Lawyer Blog

An Illinois woman has filed a lawsuit against AstraZeneca, accusing them of failing to provide adequate warnings about the risks associated with taking the drug. In the lawsuit she claims its prescription heartburn drugs—Prilosec and Nexium, also known as protein pump inhibitors—caused her to suffer multiple and painful fractures of her feet. In March of this year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned that prescription versions of these drugs were associated with increased risk of fractures, and, in May 2010, the agency announced it would be adding information about the potential fracture risk to the Nexium label. All this came on the heels of a review of several epidemiological studies which reported an increased risk of the wrist, spine and hip associated with the use of protein pump inhibitors.
After reading about the new lawsuit, two jury verdicts having to do with protein pump inhibitors come to mind, both of which involved wrongful death settlements whose parties remain anonymous for the purposes of confidentiality. The first case is medical malpractice case in which the plaintiff suffered from gastric problems, was diagnosed with different gastric disorders, and was prescribed Prilosec over 38 times when he actually had gastric cancer, and, according to the lawsuit, died because he had not been timely treated or diagnosed by doctors who were negligent in failing to order and perform the proper diagnostic test. The family was awarded over a million dollars. The other case involved a man who had cardiovascular issues and high cholesterol, was prescribed Prilosec, (as side note: in this particular case the reason he was prescribed Prilosec is unknown, as the case details remain confidential, but research suggests the drug may lower cholesterol levels by inhibiting the amounts of cholesterol-producing enzymes produced in the liver), and he then died after having an adverse reaction to the drug. The family received a half a million dollars.
With more and more people being prescribed protein pump inhibitors at an alarming, and perhaps even an indiscriminate, rate, it is no wonder there are not more lawsuits pending. The newness of such drugs poses a real problem for consumers because doctors and researchers really don’t know, and won’t know for a very long time, what the long term affects of these drugs will be. It is like patients are guinea pigs in a large experiment which, for the most part, seems to be out of control. The current studies and reports produce finding that are not concrete, nor are any of them final; they’re open ended and vague, and they’ve only just begun.