Sgt. Eric Layne’s death was not pretty. A few months after starting a drug regimen combining the antidepressant Paxil, the mood stabilizer Klonopin and a controversial anti-psychotic drug manufactured by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, Seroquel, the Iraq war veteran was “suffering from incontinence, severe depression [and] continuous headaches,” according to his widow, Janette Layne.
AstraZeneca is to stop researching some disease areas that form the backbone of its current business — including schizophrenia and acid reflux — in a drive to focus R&D efforts and cut costs.
AstraZeneca Plc is facing as many as 26,000 lawsuits over its antipsychotic drug Seroquel as the drugmaker prepares for its first jury trial over claims the medicine causes diabetes, according to court filings.
The marketing team sued over a drug’s alleged side effects tried to suppress key data, an ex-employee has claimed. Seroquel’s former UK medical adviser told the BBC he was pressured to approve promotional material which said weight gain was not an issue. Maker AstraZeneca, which faces fresh legal action next month, said it took concerns about its conduct seriously.
A federal lawsuit has been filed against pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca for its role in paying Chicago psychiatrist Dr. Michael Reinstein nearly $500,000 over the course of a decade to conduct research and to promote its anti-psychotic drug, Seroquel. Cited in the lawsuit was the fact that Reinstein would continually prescribe roughly double the amount of drugs other psychiatrists would prescribe for the same conditions.