Product Liability Attorney Blog

Yaz birth control pills have suffered from a lot of controversy concerning their side effects these days. In fact, there are so many Yaz lawsuits that they had to be consolidated into one MDL. Some of the reasons for this are because of blood clots.

Blood clots are a severe side effect that is caused by the drosperinone, the main medicinal ingredient in Yaz and Yasmin. However, not all of the blood clots that are caused by Yaz are the same. Each type has its own symptoms, causes and effects. For example, a thromboembolism happens when the blood cells coagulate in the blood stream and stop proper blood flow. This condition can occur with relatively simple blood clots that heal themselves or produce many different sized blood clots that be fatal.

A deep vein thrombosis, however, causes a blood clot to occur inside a major vein, such as those that are in the leg or arm. Sometimes these dissolve without help, but sometimes they have to be treated with blood thinners that dissolve it for you. Since this type of blood clot can go on untreated for quite some time before the patient knows they have one, it can travel to the heart or lungs via the blood stream, and this can be fatal as well because it can lead to a pulmonary embolism.

This brings us to the most dangerous type of blood clot; the pulmonary embolism. This is the most fatal form of Yaz blood clot. Every year thousands of Americans die from pulmonary embolisms (around 60,000). So far, no one really knows how many of those deaths are linked to Yaz. Regardless of how many blood clot deaths can be proven as caused by Yaz, the Bellwether trial will likely set a precedent in Yaz blood clot litigation decisions in the future. For that reason alone, the decision will be watched by all pending litigants.

According to a new study, American teenagers are using more birth control pills like Yaz or Yasmin. The study was conducted by Thomson Reuters and was released on Thursday.

The study says that of young women between the ages of 13 to 18, 18 percent of them have had birth control pill prescriptions filled in 2009. This amount is higher than it was in 2002. The study also shows that the kids who used commercial insurance plans to get the prescriptions for birth control pills was 63 percent higher between the years 2002-2009, and those kids who used Medicaid to fill their prescriptions increased by 38 percent. In 2009, Yaz was the most popular birth control pill on the market.

Most of the birth control prescriptions were filled by older teenagers. The 18-year-old kids that were using Medicaid represented 27.1 percent of the group taking birth control pills, whereas just 3.7 percent of kids that were taking birth control pills were 13 years old. All of the information in this study was conducted on information that was obtained from the Thompson Reuters Multi-State Medicaid Database. The database has information on more than 3 million people.

Dr. Bill Marder, who is a senior vice president and economist at Thompson Reuters, said, "These findings provide a benchmark for oral contraceptive use in the insured population." He also said that this larger number of pill users should be used when it is decided whether birth control pills like Yaz and Yasmin should be given out as a part of Obama’s health care law that focuses on preventative services.

The manufacturer of Yaz and Yasmin, Bayer, has been fighting off lawsuits filed by women who have suffered from major side effects of using the pills. The women claim that Yaz caused side effects like pulmonary embolisms, gallbladder disease and blood clots. They are also claiming that Bayer hid the negative side effects while promoting its off-label uses. The first of the trials is set to begin later on in the year.

Studies (like the one published recently in the Journal of Oncology) have shown that antidepressants like Paxil and Effexor can help cool a hot flash in menopausal women, but questions abound about whether it's a good idea.

While hot flashes are very uncomfortable, you can't help but wonder if there is a safer way to control them. The study did show that SSRI drugs like Paxil and Effexor do work at offering relief from hot flashes, but neither drug is able to be used when the patient was taking Tamixofen, a drug given to women who suffer from breast cancer. Since Tamixofen causes hot flashes anyway, the thought of giving the patient a more dangerous medication to treat a relatively minor side effect from another drug seems like counterproductive. One drug that did seem to work during the study was Celexa (Citalopram), which can be taken while on Tamixofen. Paxil and Effexor are not able to be used while a patient is taking the breast cancer drug because paroxetine and flouxetine prevent the enzymes that the body needs in order to be able to metabolize the Tamixofen.

Just because a pill can be used as a means of treating a side effect from another pill doesn't mean it is a good option — especially when that option is more dangerous than the side effect you are trying to treat. This is more important if the patient is suffering from depression. That is the case when a patient considers treating hot flashes (a relatively mild temporary condition) with a pill like Paxil or Effexor, which both have the potential to be fatal. It seems irresponsible to treat a discomfort with a medication that can kill the patient instead.

Both Paxil and Effexor cause patients to experience harmful side effects such as difficulty breathing, irregular heartbeat, vomiting, weight loss/gain, insomnia, blurred vision, aggressive behavior, suicidal thoughts and suicide. With this in mind, it may just be better to ask yourself if the benefits to losing hot flashes is worth the risk.

With so many lawsuits being filed against Bayer, the makers of the controversial yet popular oral contraceptives Yaz and Yasmin, over the drugs' adverse side effects, it is a wonder that the pills are still so popular. After a recent study conducted by Thomas Reuters and released two weeks ago showed that the pills were the most popular oral contraceptive among teens between the ages of 13-18, it is more important than ever to point out the real dangers associated with this drug.

As more and more teens turn to birth control pills as a means of preventing unwanted pregnancies, just as many are using the pill to do combat other problems related to their menses like regulation. Bayer played into that at one point, when they started a successful marketing campaign that promoted some of Yaz and Yasmin's off-label uses, such as curing acne, correcting major symptoms of PMS, regulating menstrual cycles and even helping to reduce the risk of the girls getting ovarian or endometrial cancer.

What Bayer's clever ad didn't do was explain how high the cost was when you took the "magic" pill. Severe and life-threatening side effects — including blood clots, pulmonary embolisms, heart attacks, strokes and deep vein thrombosis — all have the potential to kill these teens. If you ignore the cause of these conditions and just think of the conditions on their own, you can find out that pulmonary embolisms kill tens of thousands of women every year. If you add Yaz to the mix, experts say that many of the deaths that are caused by pulmonary embolisms are Yaz-related.

There are various statistics about heart attack and blot clot deaths as well, but the fact is that young women generally do not die from these conditions unless a drug like Yaz is involved. The main selling point of this drug is its primary ingredient drosperinone. This is a new form of progestin that alters the natural balance of potassium in the body. This is also the biggest reason why Yaz causes the dangerous and often deadly condition hyperkalemia. The fact is that Yaz is more deadly than these teens and young women can ever imagine, but for some reason they keep on taking the risk.

A Reglan lawsuit has made it to the United States Supreme Court to be heard and the matter could wind up having a dramatic effect on the future of the pharmaceutical industry and how it operates.

In the case of Pliva Inc. v. Mensing, both sides were heard in opening arguments. Gladys Mensing was diagnosed with tardive dyskinesia after taking metoclopramide, a generic version of the acid reflux drug Reglan. Mensing was a waitress when she was given generic Reglan in 2001 as a treatment for heartburn. She took the pill for 4 years and the drug caused her to get TD, which is characterized by Parkinson’s-like symptoms.

Mensing’s prolonged use of Reglan is likely the cause of her symptoms and spasms as much research has shown that use of Reglan for longer than 12 weeks increases the patient’s likelihood of getting TD and other disorders. However, the FDA didn’t include this warning on the label until 2009. Eventually federal law came around and stipulated that the generic drug makers should also include the black box warnings on their labels. This came too late for people like Mensing. Generic drug makers are claiming that they didn’t include the information in their drugs because federal law didn’t allow them to, but state laws say the exact opposite so that argument might go unheard.

Justice Antonin Scalia gave an opinion on the subject of this debate when he said, “[drug makers don’t] know anything about science. [A generic drug maker] knows how to replicate this pill exactly. That’s all he really knows."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed and asks, “Do you think Congress really intended to create a market in which consumers can only sue brand-named products? Because if that’s the case, why would anybody ever take [a generic]?”

This lawsuit is sure to get the attention of both sides of the generic v. brand name drug debate and the decision from the courts will no doubt set the precedent for future cases that involve generic drug makers.

A couple in Louisiana is finally having their Paxil lawsuit heard in court. The couple claims that their son suffered from birth defects after the mother took Paxil while she was pregnant. The boy’s birth defects include congenital complications as well as a club foot. The parents are suing GlaxoSmithKline, the makers of Paxil.

Russell and Desiree Figueroa are claiming that they didn’t actually know that their son was injured because of the Paxil until years passed. He was born on Nov. 12, 2003, and the couple believe that because Glaxo hid the adverse side effects of Paxil from the public, that is the reason they didn't immediately connect Paxil with their son’s injuries. Since the child was born before the FDA issued a black box warning on Paxil in 2005, this family’s case should prove valid. At the time of the warning, the FDA stated that a study existed that showed that there was a link between Paxil and congenital malformations in babies whose mothers took Paxil during the first trimester of pregnancy.

The FDA said, "Healthcare professionals are advised to carefully weigh the potential risks and benefits of using paroxetine therapy in women during pregnancy and to discuss these findings as well as treatment alternatives with their patients."

Desiree Figueroa’s lawsuit claims that she was prescribed Paxil by her doctor to treat depression and she wasn’t warned of the potential harm to her unborn baby or she would never have taken the drug. This lawsuit is interesting because she claims that since Paxil crosses the placenta, it is unreasonably dangerous.

Paxil lawsuits have been popping up all over the place. Almost all of the lawsuits against Glaxo allege the same thing — that the company hid the dangers that Paxil really caused to patients and hid the side effects to the babies of pregnant women.

With the Bellwether Yaz trial trying to get underway, Bayer, the makers of the popular but controversial birth control pill, has requested that a "special master" oversee the depositions given by experts overseas. Bayer is based in Germany.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers are naturally opposing the request for a Special Master by claiming that they already agreed to the protocol for the depositions. So far, it is not known what the judge in the case is going to decide; however, the parties are expected to conduct another status conference today.

The bellwether trial has been instituted to help prevent clogging up the courts with all of the lawsuits being filed. The pretrial proceedings will likely force the trials to be delayed until early 2012 now that both sides have agreed that they will need more time in order to sift through all of the evidence. If the judge grants the delay, at least two more lawsuits will have to wait to see a courtroom.

A recent study that was conducted by Thomson Reuters and released two weeks ago reported that Yaz and Yasmin were the most popular oral contraceptives on the market today among teens between the ages of 13-18. That is a scary thought since the side effects that these girls can suffer from are life-threatening. While Bayer has stopped the misleading advertising of the products as recommended by the FDA, the filling of prescriptions hasn’t ebbed at all.

Yaz and Yasmin lawsuits have been filed in the thousands and may get to be as many 25,000 before the filings are over, according to current estimates. Yaz has been associated with severe side effects that are proving to be fatal for many patients. Some of the side effects include strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms, deep vein thrombosis, blood clots and gallbladder disease requiring surgery to correct.

After taking Levaquin for treating a sinus infection, ballet teacher Marcia woke up in the middle of the night to a loud ringing in her ears that she couldn’t escape. That was just the beginning of her problems.

The sound that Marcia heard in her ears was dismissed by a doctor at a walk-in clinic as symptoms of her sinus infection. That was all that the doctor could think since Marcia didn’t think to tell the doctor that she was taking Levaquin for the infection. That is the unfortunate part since it was this missing information that could have saved her from a world of pain.

Within four days of starting the Levaquin, Marcia’s Achilles tendon started to swell. A conveniently pre-planned appointment to a chiropodist revealed that she had tinnitus that would need physiotherapy to correct. At this time, Marcia’s ringing in her ears was still going strong. After a week of this, she finally told a doctor that she was taking Levaquin. The doctor told her to stop taking the drug immediately. While the Levaquin-related tendon damage didn’t completely curtail Marcia’s ballet teaching career, it will be some time before she is dancing again.

Marcia’s questions are the same as everyone else’s after the damage she suffered from taking Levaquin. She says, "I found out that the FDA received adverse reports about Levaquin back in 2006 — I took this drug in 2011. Why is it still on the market? And now I am afraid of taking any drug. 'We still prescribe Levaquin because it has more benefit than harm,' I was told. How can drug companies play with peoples' lives like this?"

Many lawsuits have been filed by patients just like Marcia who claim that the makers of the antibiotic hid the real dangers of Levaquin from the public. One case was ruled in the plaintiff's favor. If you have been given Levaquin and suffered from tendon damage, contact a doctor and lawyer immediately. You may be eligible to receive money for your injuries.

Trout in the St. Lawrence Seaway may be feeling a lot less stressed out about global warming these days thanks to Paxil. Back in January, a story was published in New Scientist Magazine which noted that since October 2010, Sebastien Sauvé at the University of Montreal had been "exposing groups of 50 native brook trout to sewage from the city's sewage works, mixed with clean water from the St Lawrence."

When Sauvé started to screen the fishes' livers, brains and muscles, he found a lot of popular and controversial antidepressants such as Prozac and Paxil. There weren’t a lot of the controversial drugs in the fish, just a bit less than a nanogram of the medications per gram of fish tissue. Still it was enough for Sauvé to give a warning that in time, it was expected that the drugs could inevitably cause changes in the fishes' behavior and ecology.

Sauvé, along with the rest of his team, was able to show that the fish which had their brain cells exposed to the effluent in a Petri dish had cells that weren’t as active as they should have been. Sauvé’s study is going to dig deeper into the effects that the drugs have on the fish. He will want to see if the drugs will have an effect on the fishes' other behaviors and interactions with each other.

One thing Sauvé did say is that people looking to purchase the trout for food don’t have to worry since the miniscule amount of Paxil and Prozac is harmless to humans. He is more concerned with how the fishes' ecology and health will be affected by the effluent in such a large city that sells upwards of 500 million antidepressants every year. The results of these studies should prove interesting.

Washington, D.C., at-large Councilman David Catania introduced a bill on February 15 of this year which aims to legalize the over the counter sale of controversial contraceptives Yaz and Yasmin in the nation's capitol. Should the bill pass, it would make Washington the only area in the U.S. to sell birth control pills over the counter.

For some women, the convenience of this idea is a great thing; however, it can have deadly consequences, also. The biggest reason that most D.C. women go to the doctor is to get birth control, and since STD screenings occur at these yearly exams, experts say the rate of STD transmission — including HIV — could skyrocket if selling the medication over the counter causes fewer women to go in for their annual exams. Washington, D.C. currently has the highest American HIV/AIDS rate in the country; 3 percent of the population in DC is HIV positive (and that's just the reported and diagnosed cases). That rate could be as high 6 percent when you consider the number of people who haven't been diagnosed yet.

Also, Yaz and Yasmin have been linked to various life-threatening conditions such as blood clots, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms, gallbladder disease and deep vein thrombosis. These side effects alone make Yaz and Yasmin dangerous to take even with a doctor's supervision; without the proper monitoring, many women may be more likely to die from the harmful effects of these drugs since there is no one keeping track of symptoms and dosages.

Doctors should be a large part of women deciding to take Yaz since each woman's circumstances are different. Some women may be more likely to suffer life-threatening consequences as a result of the pills than others. It seems quite irresponsible to make such a dangerous drug so easily and widely available. In the long run, the only benefit to selling birth control over the counter is that more young women and teens will have direct access to the pills and prevent unwanted pregnancies. But will it be worth risking their lives?

According to a recent study, researchers at the University of Manitoba have discovered that 25 percent of the people who are taking antidepressant drugs such as Effexor and Paxil haven't even been diagnosed with depression.

This study, which was recently published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, claims that of the 1,000 American adults who were interviewed during the years 2001 and 2003, at least 10 percent of those people admitted to taking antidepressants. Of that 10 percent, 25 percent of them were not properly diagnosed with depression before they started taking the drugs.

Antidepressants are generally used to treat depression and anxiety. The researchers that conducted the study also said that some of the patients taking the antidepressants reported problems like difficulty sleeping and mood swings when they were given the drugs, and that this is common. Research has also shown that those people who take antidepressants like Paxil without a proper diagnosis were more likely to suffer from adverse side effects than those that were diagnosed with the conditions the drugs are used to treat.

SSRI drugs like Paxil and Effexor are the most commonly prescribed drugs for treating depression and anxiety disorders; however, if you take the drugs without suffering from any of those conditions, you're exposing yourself to the negative side effects without reason, and you are obviously not getting any benefits.

Some of the negative side effects that have been associated with Paxil include mood swings, aggressive behavior, suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior and birth defects in children born to women who took the drug while pregnant. Knowing that these drugs can harm you so much, it almost seems silly that anyone would consider taking the drugs if they didn't have to.

A new study conducted by the Omeros Corporation has discovered that two orphan G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are linked to pancreatic cancer and cognitive disorders. What makes this information interesting for Reglan users is that Reglan is also in the family of GPCRs.

On March 2, 2011, Omeros announced it was able to identify compounds that can interact selectively with at least two GPCRs that have already been linked to pancreatic cancer — GPR182 and GPR12. If you combine that with the orphans that the corporation previously unlocked — squamous cell carcinoma (GPR87), obesity (GPR85) and appetite control (GPR101) — you see that Omeros has now unlocked a total of five orphan GPCRs. That’s impressive.

GPCRs basically tell you the drug family that the targets represent. Right now, 30 percent of the drugs that are on the market today are targeting 46 different types of GPCRs (of which Reglan is one). There are about 120 orphan GPCRs, and Omeros is hoping to unlock a large percent of them for future drug development. Other GPCRs include:

• Claritin
• Zantac
• OxyContin
• Lopressor
• Imitrex
• Abilify

So far, Omeros hasn’t confirmed that Reglan causes pancreatic cancer, but who knows where this current research on GPCRs will lead. Reglan has also been linked to many other harmful conditions including tardive dyskinesia, ocular deviation, NMS and secondary Parkinson's disease. Thousands of lawsuits have resulted from patients that have contracted various conditions after taking Reglan for longer periods of time than what the FDA recommends (12 weeks). Many of the patients filing lawsuits were taking the drug for periods lasting months or even years.

What this new research being conducted by Omeros does is give patients that are currently suffering from pancreatic cancer after taking Reglan (and these other drugs) a chance to find out if the drug may be directly responsible for their condition. While it is not going to make the patient feel better to know which medication is responsible, it can give them cause to file a lawsuit which might be able to help cover their medical expenses and help pay for cutting-edge treatments that can prolong or even save their life.

Now that another Paxil lawsuit is set to go to trial in May, it has many people wondering if all of these settlements against Glaxo, the makers of Paxil, will begin to encourage better communication between drug makers and doctors in the future.

These questions are coming into play now because most of the lawsuits against the drug companies are alleging that the companies hid information that specifically pointed out the dangerous side effects associated with these drugs from the public and the doctors as well. This information is important because it is the doctors who prescribe these drugs and many of the doctors are prescribing the drugs for off-label uses that aren't approved by the FDA.

By now it is common knowledge that Paxil has been prescribed for off-label uses when it is meant to be used as an antidepressant. However, another question that arises is what to do when a woman is taking the medication and becomes pregnant. Paxil is also associated with horrible withdrawal symptoms when the drug is stopped too quickly, and many studies have been conducted to try to figure out if Paxil was more harmful to the mother or the baby. Various studies have shown that the drug is harmful to both pregnant women and their babies, and the proof of this may lie in the lawsuit settlements.

Plaintiffs in the Paxil case that are of going to trial in May have stated that the evidence will prove that Glaxo ignored all of the studies that proved the drug causes birth defects, and that they didn't properly warn doctors about that Paxil is potentially life-threatening to patients and their unborn children.

The FDA apparently agreed with the plaintiffs before the lawsuit was filed when they asked Glaxo to add the fact that it increased the chance of a child developing congenital heart defects when the drug was taken by the pregnant mother in the first trimester on the label. The Paxil label was changed in December of 2005, and only two Paxil birth defects cases have made it to trial since then. Of those two Paxil birth defects trials, one of them was settled for $2.5 million to the plaintiff at the end of 2009. As for the birth defects trial that is coming in May, the results should be interesting.