Actos Bladder Cancer Lawsuits Heat Up

Actos bladder cancer lawsuits are a massive concern for hundreds of Washington diabetes patients and thousands more around the country. Actos (pioglitazone), one of the few prescription drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat type 2 diabetes, has now been proven to be far more detrimental than the FDA had previously suggested.

The FDA last summer made the attempt to switch millions of diabetes patients from the deadly defective drug Avandia to Actos, however, the move has proven to be fatal in some cases due to the risk of bladder cancer. Takeda, Asia’s biggest drugmaker and producer of Actos, is now facing as many as 10,000 Actos bladder cancer claims after U.S. regulators found last year the drug was linked to the disease.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Doherty in Lafayette, Louisiana, was appointed by a judges panel as the presiding judge in December, has taken the first steps in resolving the cases by appointing 19 plaintiffs’ lawyers to manage litigation involving U.S. claims. This is an important move since the first hearing on the cases is set for March 22, according to court filings.

In the court filings, beyond the allegations of the drug causing bladder cancer, the plaintiffs also claim that Takeda (and co-defendant Eli Lilly & Co.) withheld information about the risk and failed to provide adequate warnings. Due to these allegations around the world, the Japanese drug company pulled Actos off the market in Germany and France last year after it was linked to an increased cancer risk in those countries. However, regardless of the FDA’s findings of the drug’s connection to bladder cancer, the company has yet to pull the drug off of the market in the US.

Most likely because Actos is the company’s top-seller with sales of 387.9 billion yen ($4.8 billion) last fiscal year, covering 27% of the Takeda’s revenue. With those kinds of numbers, it’s hard for a company to pass up putting a few people’s lives at risk. The victims, on the other hand, disagree with that business model.

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