A recently filed lawsuit alleges that an Oklahoma man developed bladder cancer as a result of taking the diabetes drug Actos (pioglitazone).
The lawsuit was filed a lawsuit on May 23, 2013, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana (Case No. 6:13-cv-1237) on behalf of an Oklahoma man who developed bladder cancer and subsequently died. The suit alleges that the cancer was caused by the drug Actos. The suit is one of thousands of cases filed as part of the multidistrict litigation (MDL) entitled In Re: Actos (pioglitazone) Products Liability Litigation (6:11-md-2299) against Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly and Co.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff started taking Actos in November 2008 to treat his Type 2 diabetes. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in January 2010 and he died in October 2012, allegedly because of Actos’s side effects. The lawsuit alleges that the defendants knew about the risk of bladder cancer but did not disclose this information to consumers in order to protect financial interests. Bloomberg News reported that peak sales for Actos, in the year ending March 2011, totaled $4.5 billion, which represented 27 percent of the company’s revenues at the time.
In June 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that taking Actos for more than a year could significantly increase the risk of bladder cancer and the agency ordered an update to the drug’s safety label to address this risk. Recent research studies support the notion of a link between Actos and bladder cancer. Last year, the British Medical Journal published a study that showed Actos users were twice as likely to develop bladder cancer after taking the drug for two years. In July 2012 the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that patients taking Actos were 22 percent more likely to get bladder cancer.
The lawsuit was filed on the plaintiff’s behalf by national law firm Parker Waichman LLP. Jerrold S. Parker, a founding partner of the firm, is on the Plaintiff’s Steering Committee in the federal multidistrict litigation.
