by Amy Alexander

Created on: March 18, 2009

Avandia Class-Action Lawsuit
Avandia is manufactured by GlayoSmithKline for type 2 diabetes. It was approved for use in 1999. Since then more than 6 million people worldwide have taken this drug. Avandia helps sensitize the body to insulin and helps control blood sugar. According to recent study patients taking Avandia have a 43 percent higher rate of heart attacks. There was a high increase in the risk of heart related deaths and a 64 percent increase risk of dying from cardiovascular problems when compared to people not taking the drug.

Lawyers have filed a class-action shareholder lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline in June 2007 in a New York federal court, it also names GlaxoSmithKline's CEO J.P. Garnier and CFO Julian Heslop as defendants.

The company's stock dropped sharply after the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that Avandia increases the risk of heart attack .As it turns out, Glaxo itself had already done a similar analysis that also showed that the drug
raised the risk of heart attack. The company says it found the analysis unpersuasive, given the fact that several individual studies has failed to show a significant increase in heart attack risk so they did not widely publicize this finding.

But the lawsuit argues that the company's leaders artificially inflated Glaxo's stock price by failing to adequately disclose the analysis which revealed the potentially dangerous effect of it's key diabetes drug.

In addition to the significant increase in heart attack risk, some patients of Avandia have discovered liver problems, even tho they have no family history of liver problems and no history of drinking.

The risk of liver failure caused the Public Citizen to file a request that Avandia be taken off the market, after the group discovered that out of 14 cases of liver failure reported to the FDA and associated with Avandia, 12 people died.

And it appears that Glaxo has no plains to discontinue Avandia. In fact, Glaxo has just hired a new public relations firm to help steer the PR rudder for Avandia in the UK.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also looked into Avandia. FDA scientist estimate that Avandia has caused roughly 83,000 heart attacks so it is difficult for them to believe that Glaxo was either unaware of the risk, or unable to discover the risk through appropriate investigation and analysis of its clinical trail data.

The lawyers at Baum, Hedlund, Aristei, Goldman, and many other law firms have filed a number of lawsuits against Glaxo, and are continuing to investigate many other cases for clients who have come forward claiming that they or a family member has had heart problems associated with Avandia.

There is also reasons to believe that not only did Glaxo know about the increase risk of heart attacks that came with Avandia but they also bullied a doctor into not saying anything about the ricks to the public. DR. John B Buse was threatened with a lawsuit when he raised concerns about Avandia.

According to the record, the lawsuit alleges that Glaxo attempted to silence Dr. John B Buse by threatening him with a 4 million dollar lawsuit and characterizing him as lier according to his testimony before Congress.

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