Cancer Claim Is Dismissed Against Wyeth Hormone Drugs
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Published: October 31, 2007
Wyeth, the largest maker of hormone-replacement medicines used during menopause, won dismissal of a lawsuit in Minnesota linking its Premarin and Prempro drugs to breast cancer.
Judge George F. McGunnigle of state district court in Minneapolis granted Wyeth’s motion to throw out the case, ruling that a woman who blamed the drugs for her breast cancer had failed to offer any “scientifically valid evidence” supporting her claim, the company said yesterday.
The decision comes more than two weeks after a state court jury in Reno, Nev., ruled that Premarin and Prempro had helped cause breast cancer in three women and awarded them a total of $134.5 million. Wyeth, which faces more than 5,300 lawsuits over the two drugs, is appealing that decision. As many as six million women took the Wyeth medicines for menopause symptoms like hot flashes and mood swings before a study in 2002 highlighted the drugs’ links to cancer.
Annual sales of Wyeth’s hormone-replacement drugs topped $2 billion before the Women’s Health Initiative study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, suggested that women using the medicines had a 24 percent higher risk of breast cancer.
The drugs, which are still on the market, generated more than $1 billion in sales in 2006.
Wyeth’s lawyers insist the company conducted extensive safety tests on the drugs and warned of the risks through prescription labels and information sheets. They also contend that the company properly marketed the drugs as beneficial to women with menopause symptoms and osteoporosis.