Bayer Faces 78 Trasylol Suits
During last Friday’s annual shareholder meeting, Bayer AG’s chief executive officer Werner Wenning announced that the drugmaker faces 78 lawsuits in the United States over the anti-bleeding drug Trasylol.
According to a Reuters news story, Wenning also stated that the company would vigorously defend the suits.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Trasylol (also known as aprotinin), a clotting drug used to prevent bleeding, in 1993. On Jan. 20, 2006, an article suggesting a link between Trasylol and renal toxicity was published in the medical journal Transfusion. Later that same month, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article, co-authored by Dr. Dennis Mangano of the nonprofit Ischemia Research and Education Foundation, linking Trasylol to a higher risk of stroke, heart attack and kidney failure.
In the fall of 2006, an FDA advisory board met to decide whether the warning on Trasylol needed to be changed. At the meeting, Bayer failed to disclose the findings of a Trasylol study it had funded. In that study, Dr. Alexander Walker—a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health—reviewed the hospital records of 67,000 patients and found that those given Trasylol had a risk of death 64 percent higher than that of patients who received a comparison drug. It wasn’t until November 2007 that the drug was finally pulled from the market.
On Feb. 21, the New England Journal of Medicine released the study by Walker and a second study, conducted by Duke University Medical Center researchers. Both showed that patients given Trasylol during heart surgery were more likely to die than patients given a comparable drug.
On April 17, eight lawsuits were filed in a Florida federal court on behalf of Trasylol victims and their families. The plaintiffs are represented by St. Louis lawyers John J. Carey of Carey & Danis and Jeffrey J. Lowe of The Lowe Law Firm.
If you or a loved one suffered complications after taking Trasylol contact Carey & Danis. We can help. Carey & Danis is a national law firm that represents individuals injured by America's largest corporations.
For more information, fill out our online contact form or call Carey & Danis toll-free at 800-721-2519.
