Product Liability Claims Involving Byetta

Three new lawsuits were filed in the state of California in September concerning the injectable diabetes drug Byetta. The lawsuits allege design defect and inadequate warnings of the drug’s alleged links to pancreatitis. The lawsuits name the manufacturer, Amylin, and the marketer, Eli Lilly, as the named defendants in the suit.
Byetta is a injectable drug for adult Type 2 diabetes. The principle ingredients of the drug are a derivative of the saliva of the Gila Monster, a lizard found in the southwestern United States. According to public information, approximately 1 million patients have used Byetta since it went on the market in June of 2005. The lawsuits pending against the named defendants are alleging that the defendants concealed from the public the extent of their knowledge concerning the possible linkage between the use of the drug and acute pancreatitis. In December, 2007, the United States Food and Drug Administration issued a Safety Alert indicating 30 reports of acute pancreatitis in connection with the use of this drug. In August, the FDA supplemented this safety alert by indicating an additional 6 adverse reports of pancreatitis.
If you or a loved one have used this drug and have developed acute pancreatitis, obviously, you may wish to confer with counsel concerning your legal rights. If the manufacturers were aware of a documented linkage between acute pancreatitis and the use of this drug, to the extent that they did not include warnings of this link to pancreatitis, there may be the valid basis of a claim against these defendants for a failure to warn of known dangers.