St. Petersburg Times Reports on Zyprexa

A risky drug may get wider market
The FDA may approve Zyprexa for kids, despite its significant side effects in adult use.
By ROBERT FARLEY, Times Staff Writer
Published December 16, 2007

It sounds like a cosmic, FDA joke:

The Food and Drug Administration approves the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa to treat adults with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. It becomes a market wonder, a bestseller. But the side effects turn out to be dangerous; some patients develop diabetes.

Some 30,000 people sue the manufacturer, Eli Lilly. The pharmaceutical giant shells out more than $1-billion to settle the cases.

Here comes the punch line:

Though studies show that kids are even more susceptible to Zyprexa's dangerous side effects, now Lilly wants the government's seal of approval for adolescents to use it. And the FDA is about to say yes.

* * *

Like a mounted animal head hung as a trophy from the hunt, a framed copy of a $2.8-million check from Bayer pharmaceutical hangs in the law office of Joseph Saunders. The check says: It's my business to sue drug companies, and I'm good at it.

Saunders practices in Pinellas Park, but hundreds of lawyers like him across the country have found a niche suing Lilly.

He has eight Zyprexa clients. Most are psychotic. Most suffer from diabetes, which can cause kidney failure, heart disease, liver damage, blindness.

They were prescribed Zyprexa during the time doctors swooned over the big new thing. Approved by the FDA in 1996, Zyprexa was one of a new class of drugs called atypicals, marketed as powerfully effective for people suffering the dreadful psychotic breaks of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

And -- this was key -- the new drugs were less likely to cause the tremors and facial tics that sometimes accompanied older drugs.

Zyprexa was deemed so safe, doctors began prescribing it "off-label" to treat depression, anxiety, ADHD, even sleeplessness. As it turned out, studies would show that Zyprexa may be the most effective of the new class of antipsychotic drugs, but it's also most likely to cause serious weight gain and elevated blood sugar levels.

Saunders says you can't win a lawsuit against a drug company just because you suffer a side effect. But pharmaceuticals do have a legal responsibility to warn doctors about known risks.

The tens of thousands of lawsuits contend that Lilly did not fully disclose risks it discovered during studies conducted to get FDA approval for Zyprexa, risks that became more apparent in the years after the drug hit the market.

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[DannyHaszard]

At my clinic in the Doctors have stopped prescribing Zyprexa except as a temporary PRN for acute cases only.

WHY? for two reasons:

1) The reason they give it out at all is because it is a fine med where indicated for specific symptoms and does the job very well

2)They stopped it as daily maintenance because they believe in their own hearts that it is the worst offender over the other atypicals AND because their patients refuse to take it on account of all the bad Zyprexa PR

[DannyHaszard]

Lilly's top blockbuster Zyprexa is implicated in 'causing' diabetes and Lilly's other blockbuster Byetta helps to treat the diabetes caused by Zyprexa.

WOW!

Zyprexa has generated a lot of bad press for Eli Lilly and they still have unresolved Zyprexa settlement claims.

Eli Lilly is 'reaping the whirlwind' for aggressive marketing of Zyprexa that has caused suffering and deaths.

--

Daniel Haszard Zyprexa patient who got diabetes from it.

[ObamaNigga]

I got HORRIFIC side-effects from the drug...THAT DRUG IS DANGEROUS

[JESUSISGREATEST]

@HilarityBribo How did you know?

[09669390]

Thanks to Zyprexa, I have gained more than 10kgs , even though I am eating the same food. I don't have to worry about killing myself, I just let the medication do that for me. I have been tested for diabetes, but the doctors say everything is fine, I am bigger than a whale. These medicines have done nothing for myself esteem.

[madbandicooot]

@jellocostello me too! I was given antipsychotics for mood/anxiety, these dr's are idiots giving them out like their sweets!!!!! they should lose their job.

[HilarityBribo]

Zyprexa basically shuts your brain down, It will cause depression in you.

[jellocostello]

my dr is an asshole, i was put on this drug for sleep and anxiety, not for bipoller or skitzo

[jellocostello]

Diabetes now!! shit man fuck!! i've been trying to get off this stuff for a long time but i cant sleep when i go off of it. making me fat killing my sexdrive effecting my concentration now i'm finding out it causes diabetes!! what next? aww man. shit!!

[ojewel]

Hmmmm. Good lawsuit material. I will let you know if I win.

[madbandicooot]

I know someone on zyprexa, before he was slim now he is so fat he looks like the marchmallow man...