Lilly sold drug for dementia knowing it didn't help, files show

[babylonsister]

Lilly sold drug for dementia knowing it didn't help, files show

Unsealed internal company documents show that Lilly marketed an antipsychotic drug to older patients with dementia, an unapproved use for it.
BY MARGARET CRONIN FISK, ELIZABETH LOPATTO AND JEF FEELEY
Bloomberg News


Eli Lilly & Co. urged doctors to prescribe Zyprexa for elderly patients with dementia, an unapproved use for the antipsychotic, even though the drugmaker had evidence the medicine didn't work for such patients, according to unsealed internal company documents.

In 1999, four years after Lilly sent study results to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration showing Zyprexa didn't alleviate dementia symptoms in older patients, it began marketing the drug to those very people, according to documents unsealed in insurer suits against the company for overpayment.

Regulators required Lilly and other antipsychotic drug- makers in April 2005 to warn that the products posed an increased risk to elderly patients with dementia. The documents show the health dangers in marketing a drug for an unapproved use, called off-label promotion, said Sidney Wolfe, head of the health research group at Public Citizen in Washington.

''By definition, off-label means there is no clear evidence that the benefits of a drug outweigh the risks,'' Wolfe said. ``The reason why off-label promotion is illegal is that you can greatly magnify the number of people who will be harmed.''

In 1999, when Lilly began its marketing push, Zyprexa's only approved use was for patients suffering from schizophrenia, according to the FDA. In 2008, Zyprexa was Lilly's best-selling drug, with $4.7 billion in sales, while antipsychotics as a group topped U.S. drug sales last year, with $14.6 billion.

more...

http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/1095411.html

[panader0]

1. The legal drugs are the ones that are bad for you

When I see those ads on TV, most of the ad is about the bad side-effects. May cause heart attack, sexual dysfunction, vomiting, diarrhea. Yeah, our country has a drug problem alright.

[uppityperson]

6. As opposed to crystal meth which is very very healthy?

I guess you would rather that drug commercials not mention negative side effects? EVERYTHING can have a negative side effect, even water.

Personally I'd like to see them stop doing those ads for drugs, period. They should NOT be advertised but prescribed.

[gblady]

2. I'm reading....

a fascinating book called The Myth of Alzheimer's
written by Dr. Peter Whitehouse, a geriatric neurologist.
http://www.themythofalzheimers.com/

This article supports his belief that the drug companies
are out to make money promising false hope for elders with dementia.

[TheMadMonk]

4. My Grandmother was diagnosed with dementia.

Whilst moving house something I had long suspected was pretty much proven.

She was placed in respite care prior to the move and something they used there caused all the skin around her mouth to blister and peel. Off to hospital and onto a glucose drip for rehydration and "feeding". The results were instantaneous and nothing short of miraculous. The best part of ten years of dementia decline was reversed in just hours. She turned back into the person we had not known for those ten years. She knew people, she was lucid and could carry on a conversation.

Then her face healed and the drip was removed. And as she dehydrated she plunged straight back into advanced dementia. But it had to come out, because a drip is classed as an invasive procedure.

I'd suspected that dehydration was the major cause of her dementia for a long time because her lucidity varied pretty much in lock step with the amount of fluid we could persuade her to drink.

Unfortunately that was often not very much because she'd discovered that if she didn't drink she didn't have to get up out of her chair as often to go to the toilet. She would quite literally force the cup away from her lips or deliberately spill her drinks, anything to put off the need to get up out of her chair.


This is not to say that I don't believe Alzheimers is not a real condition. However, I do believe that a great many cases of dementia are nothing more than simple dehydration.

[unpossibles]

3. ah, another shining example of the way that profit-driven health care delivers results

badly.

[Why Syzygy]

5. kick

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

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