As all Vioxx users have been aware over the last year of so there has been a class action suit against the makers of Vioxx because of the inadequate testing or reporting of risks associated with Vioxx. Well the case has not concluded with almost 5 Billion dollars going to those that have suffered from the arthritis pain killer drug.

Merck & Co. said Friday it will pay $4.85 billion to end thousands of lawsuits over its painkiller Vioxx in what is believed to be the largest drug settlement ever.

The deal becomes binding only if 85 percent of all plaintiffs in about 26,600 lawsuits agree to drop their cases. It was finalized in the early morning hours after attorneys for Merck and the plaintiffs met with three of the four judges overseeing nearly all Vioxx claims.

Merck faced personal injury lawsuits representing 47,000 plaintiffs, and about 265 potential class action cases, filed by people or family members who claimed the drug proved fatal or injured its users. The agreement covers cases filed in both federal and state courts.

Negotiating teams met more than 50 times in eight states and spoke hundreds of times over the telephone to hammer out the deal, according to attorneys.

“I’m very happy with it,” Chris Seeger, one of the six plaintiff lawyers who helped negotiate the settlement, said Friday. “It’s a tremendous way to resolve this litigation.”

Merck pulled Vioxx from the market Sept. 30, 2004 after its own research determined the then-blockbuster painkiller doubled risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Seeger said the deal was put in motion last December when three key judges pushed the parties to open out-of-court talks.

“Every claimant is going to be compensated” once their claim is validated, he said.

Seeger believes it is the largest settlement ever in the industry and said he will recommend that his 2,000 clients accept the deal.

Merck could put the uncertainty of millions of dollars in possible settlements that have plagued the pharmaceutical company behind it, though it has been fairly successful fighting cases individually, winning 10 of 15 court verdicts to date.

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Tags: arthritis, Chris Seeger, heart attacks, Merck, Merck & Co., pain, pharmaceutical, testing, USD, vioxx

Two years ago there were problems found with arthritis medications that contained Cox-2 inhibitors and both Vioxx and Celebrex were pulled off of the market. If you remember the problem was that users of these products had a higher inciednce of cariac problems compared to a control group that took a placebo. Now Merck, one of the largest drug manufacturers worldwide is trying to create a new drug called Arcoxia that also uses Cox-2 inhibitors as a painkiller to tackle arthritis pain.

Merck wants FDA approval to sell Arcoxia, also known as etoricoxib, to treat the signs and symptoms of osteoarthritis. The Whitehouse Station, N.J. company said its drug should be an option for the estimated 21 million Americans who suffer from osteoarthritis.

The FDA is at this point against this new drug although Merck says that the results are the same as an older Arthritis drug called Diclofenac which although older is apparently safe.

The reason that I bring this all up today is because it seems that after the initial hype and banning of Cox-2 based pain control there have not been many studies and it would be nice to see more info on the good or the bad of these Cox-2 based drugs

Tags: Arcoxia, arthritis, control group, Cox, Diclofenac, fda, Merck, New Jersey, osteoarthritis, pain, vioxx, Whitehouse Station

Perhaps Vioxx and Celebrex and the Cox-2 inhibitors are not the culprit. There is an important report from England that is saying that using Ibuprofen as an arthritis pain killer will raise your heart attack risk as much as Vioxx or Celebrex.

High doses of older painkiller drugs may pose the same cardiac risk as newer medications such as
Vioxx and other cox-2 inhibitor drugs, according to a British study that looked at what is regarded as the best evidence from randomized, controlled trials.

Data from 138 such trials with 140,000 participants showed a 42 percent increased risk of serious blood vessel problems such as heart attack and stroke in those taking selective cox-2 inhibitors, the chemical class that includes Vioxx ,
Bextra and Celebrex. Cox-2 inhibitors belong to a broader class of pain relievers called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which also include non-cox-2 medications such as ibuprofen, diclofenac, naproxen and aspirin.

And the study — which was funded by various U.K. public-sector medical groups — also found a similar increase in cardiac risk for other NSAIDs, said Dr. Colin Baigent, a reader in clinical epidemiology at the University of Oxford and an author of the report in the June 3 issue of the British Medical Journal.

Specifically, long-term use of high-dose (800 milligrams three times per day) ibuprofen was associated with a 51 percent higher risk for “vascular events” compared to placebo, while long-term use of high-dose (75 milligrams two times a day) diclofenac boosted the risk by 63 percent, the U.K. team reported. No such risk was seen with long-term use of naproxen (sold under the brand name Aleve).
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Tags: Aleve, arthritis, Author, Cataflam, chemical class, Cleveland Clinic, Colin Baigent, Cox, heart attack, heart disease, ibuprofen, interim chairman, Massage, Merck, Merck & Co., Motrin, pain, pain killing products, Steven Nissen, the British Medical Journal, United Kingdom, University of Oxford, vioxx

At the American Heart Association conference yesterday a new study was released that showed that Pfizer’s cholesterol drug Lipitor, showed no significant reduction in “major coronary events” versus rival treatment Merck’s Zocor.

The five-year study found no statistically significant difference between Lipitor and US drugmaker Merck’s Zocor in reducing heart disease-related death, heart attack and cardiac arrest. Results of the study were presented on Tuesday at an American Heart Association conference.

The study did show a difference in some secondary targets. Lipitor was 13 per cent better than Zocor in reducing major heart events when strokes were included.

The comparison between Lipitor and Zocor is important for Pfizer. The world’s largest drugmaker continuously seeks to develop an extensive body of data that will persuade doctors that Lipitor, the biggest-selling drug in the world with $12 billion, yes that is Billion dollars in sales this year, is better than older, cheaper drugs from the same statin class of cholesterol reducers. Pfizer wants to preserve sales in the face of generic versions of Zocor, whose US patent expires next year.
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Tags: American Heart Association, cardiac arrest, heart attack, heart attacks, heart disease, lipitor, Merck, pfizer, United States, USD, Zocor