April 28, 2014 — The Journal Star reports that a Lipitor lawsuit has been filed by a Nebraska woman who was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes after using Lipitor to treat high cholesterol for nine years.
The plaintiff starting taking Lipitor in September 2002. She was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes in 2004, but continued taking Lipitor until December 2011. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered Pfizer to add warnings about the link between Lipitor and diabetes on August 11, 2011.
Pfizer is facing 464 Lipitor lawsuits as of April 2014. Most of the cases are centralized in a Multi-district Litigation (MDL No. 2502), located in a federal district court in South Carolina under District Judge Richard M. Gergel. Ward’s lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Nebraska.
Ward alleges that had Pfizer provided sufficient warnings about diabetes, she never would have used Lipitor or she would have monitored her blood-sugar levels more closely. Instead, she now has a disease that requires regular blood-testing, adherence to a strict diet, and medications to control blood-sugar. She also has a higher risk of complications like heart disease, blindness, neuropathy, and kidney disease.
Lipitor is one of the most popular and most profitable drugs in history. Over 29 million people have used Lipitor since it was approved in 1996. Although many studies have shown that Lipitor reduces cholesterol, heart attack, and stroke risk for people with pre-existing heart disease, the benefits are less clear for people without heart disease.
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