New York, NYTakeda Pharmaceutical Co., the maker of the diabetes medication Actos (poiglitizone), could be facing as many as 10,000 lawsuits in the US--lawsuits that allege the drug causes bladder cancer. Currently, a group of US justices are deciding whether or not the cases should be consolidated.
Earlier this year Takeda pulled Actos from German and French markets because of a link between the medication and cancer. In June this year, US regulators determined from an analysis of a Takeda-sponsored study that some people who used Actos, which is currently the world’s best-selling diabetes medication, faced an increased risk of developing the potentially type of cancer.
According to a report on Bloomberg, lawyers for Takeda said in a court filing from September that the company had been sued 54 times in federal courts in the US regarding allegations of the development of bladder cancer in Actos users. One of those lawsuits was filed by a warehouse worker, Terrance Allen, who took Actos for more than five years. In January 2011 he was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He named both Takeda and Eli Lilly & Co as defendants, as they marketed Actos in the US from July 1999 to March 2006.
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