The New York Times reported that AstraZeneca — the manufacturer of the atypical antipsychotic drug, Seroquel — will pay $520 million to settle two federal investigations and two whistle-blower lawsuits.
One of the investigations related to "selected physicians who participated in clinical trials involving Seroquel," AstraZeneca disclosed in a government filing. The other case related to off-label promotion of the drug.
As a result of aggressive marketing, Seroquel has been increasingly used for children and elderly people for indications not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Seroquel has been the most popular antipsychotic drug in the United States with $17 billion in sales since 2004. Despite ongoing problems stemming from Seroquel, AstraZeneca’s profit continues to soar.
Third-quarter revenue rose 10 percent, to $8.2 billion, and operating profit rose 29 percent, to $3.6 billion, at constant exchange rates over the year-earlier quarter.
AstraZeneca also said it had been served with 14,444 civil lawsuits over the drug as of Oct. 9.
Earlier this year, AstraZeneca acknowledged that it denied Seroquel’s link to diabetes years after it acknowledged such concerns in Japan. In addition to diabetes claims, patients are pursuing claims involving weight gain and state attorneys general are pursuing claims for off-label marketing and use on behalf of state Medicaid programs.
This substantial settlement is yet another stunning admission by the company of tremendous risks and dangers of its Seroquel drug and the lengths the company went in an effort to promote off-label use and garner government approval for this dangerous drug.
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Brett Emison is currently a partner at Langdon & Emison, a firm dedicated to helping injured victims across the country from their primary office near Kansas City. Mainly focusing on catastrophic injury and death cases as well as complex mass tort and dangerous drug cases, Mr. Emison often deals with automotive defects, automobile crashes, railroad crossing accidents (train accidents), trucking accidents, dangerous and defective drugs, defective medical devices.
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