Yet another set of plaintiffs has sued Bayer over kidney damage and other injuries allegedly caused by the drug Trasylol, which used to control bleeding during heart surgery. This latest suit was filed in Wisconsin by plaintiffs from Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They're joining dozens of other plaintiffs who've sued Bayer over Trasylol, which was withdrawn from the market in 2007 over safety fears.
Like the other suits, this latest complaint alleges that Bayer knew about the risk of kidney damage, heart attack and stroke in patients using Trasylol, but did not disclose study data about those risks to FDA until the 2007 recall. It seeks $1.2 million in damages plus other compensation.
This latest filing comes almost simultaneously with another Trasylol-related liability suit filed in West Virginia, in which an Ohio plaintiff claims he wasn't warned of possible side effects of the drug. And it follows three lawsuits filed in the same Wisconsin court back in September. Those three cases encompass 55 plaintiffs, Attorney at Law reports.
As the West Virginia Record points out, the first public news of Trasylol's potential to damage kidneys came in January 2006 in an online journal, followed closely by another study in the New England Journal of Medicine. The FDA put the drug under review and told doctors to monitor their patients. But it took a Harvard School of Public Health professor's data on the risk of renal failure, heart attack and stroke--which the West Virginia suit alleges Bayer possessed but failed to report--to yield a stiff warning on the drug's label. And it wasn't till November 2007 that the drug was recalled.
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