Ohio updates in category: FDA & Prescription Drugs

Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis (NSF) or Nephrogenic Fibrosing Dermopathy(NFD) is a skin and joint disease associated with the use of gadolinium based contrast agents in patients with renal...

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From January 2007 until February 2008, at least 81 wrongful deaths have been linked to heparin, as well as 785 personal injuries from allergic reactions. The Toledo Blade reports that 62 of the 81...

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Two Toledoans testified Tuesday in front of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in Washington on the government’s need for safer U.S. drug supplies,...

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Little Bay Baking Company announced a voluntary recall of Corn Bread and Muffin Mix that was sold before May 2, 2008 because it contains undeclared soy. People who may have a severe sensitivity or...

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NYU Medical Center is being sued by a liver transplant patient for $2 million in damages. The suit alleges the hospital's pharmacy is responsible for a prescription error. In court documents, the patient, 56, states he was given the wrong medication which caused his hepatitis condition to worsen. The pharmacy gave him HIV medication, when his intended prescription was for hepatitis C...

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Counsel Financial Services (CFS), the nation's largest provider of working capital credit lines exclusively to attorneys, announced today that it will provide loans to litigators representing Vioxx plaintiffs, in the wake of Merck & Co.'s recent announcement that it has established a $4.85 billion victim fund to settle thousands of lawsuits. Together with one of the largest financial...

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Users of Avandia, appear to be at increased risk for a heart attack or heart failure. Regulators should seriously consider whether the drug should be allowed to remain on the market.The pooled data from the trials indicated that Avandia, compared with controls, significantly increased the risk of heart attack by 42 percent (94 of 6,421 patients who received Avandia vs. 83 of 7,870 patients who...

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New Jersey's Supreme Court yesterday rejected a class-action lawsuit against painkiller Vioxx maid by Merck & Co. The ruling is a huge legal victory for the drug maker, which faces nearly 27,000 individual lawsuits from people claiming Vioxx, once a widely used arthritis treatment, caused heart attacks and strokes.The state's highest court, reversing two lower-court decisions, ruled that a...

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Heart attack victims given drug-coated stents after an acute heart attack are nearly five times more likely to die six months to two years later than those with bare metal forms of the arterial scaffolding, research showed on Tuesday.Drug stents remain highly controversial in the cardiology community and fears about late stent thrombosis have led to a slump in sales in the past year.Eckhart...

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The patent on hyperactivity-disorder drug Strattera is being challenged by Novartis AG's Sandoz unit. Novartis is seeking a pre-emptive ruling that its proposed generic version of Strattera won't infringe a Lilly patent that expires in 2017, or that the patent is invalid.Icelandic drugmaker Actavis Group hf is already being sued by Lilly to block a generic version of Strattera, which generated...

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The FDA has issued a safety warning relating to the drug rosiglitazone maleate, marketed under the brand name Avandia. Safety data pooled from controlled clinical trials shows a significant increase in the risk of heart attack and heart related deaths in patients that use the drug Avandia, to help control type-2 diabetes.Other published data from long-term clinical trials of Avandia provide...

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Merck & Co., accused of pointedly selling Vioxx while aware of the health risk and potential to cause heart attacks, started its defense Thursday by calling their top research scientist to testify and explain the vast research the company does.Merck's director of clinical research and vice president of early research both said the company had preformed dozens of tests on the arthritis dug to...

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Federal approval has been granted to Pfizer Inc. to market the painkiller Celebrex as treatment for thousands of children that suffer with a devastating form of arthritis. The approval allows the New York company to promote the drug for juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in patients that are two years of age and older. The drug is already used off-label by many doctors as the treatment for the...

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Good news for Felicia Garza - a Texas judge certified the ruling of a state jury that held the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. liable for the Vioxx related death of her husband. The bad news however is the same judge decided the initial damages awarded to Garza in the tune of $32 million, violated state laws and therefore reduced the award to $8.7 million.Leonel Garza died in 2001 after...

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Pfizer has received federal approval to market Celebrex, its Cox-2 inhibiting painkiller, as a treatment for Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA). JRA affects tens of thousands of children, and other treatments have seen limited success or resulted in severe side effects.The decision comes after FDA advisers recommended Nov. 29 the drug as an effective but not necessarily safe treatment for the...

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