Bloomberg today reports on the British government taking steps to drastically reduce the use of antipsychotics in treating elders with dementia. A recent report estimated that upwards of 1,800 Brits die each year after getting the drugs for dementia and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 12, 2009 10:53 AM
The office of Utah's Attorney General Mark Shurtleff today announced that it had recently settled its illegal off-label marketing of Zyprexa claims with Eli Lilly for $24 million. Said Shurtleff's office in a press release: "It is a crime for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 11, 2009 11:45 AM
News is out that the State of South Carolina nad Eli Lilly have reached a $45 million settlement over the state's lawsuit against Lilly over its handling of Zyprexa. "South Carolina and other states argued Eli Lilly: "Did not properly...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 23, 2009 01:14 PM
The New York Times reported yesterday on an unpublished study of retired NFL players which shows a shockingly high rate of dementia in former players over 50 years of age. This comes on the heels of other research showing depression...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 30, 2009 12:03 AM
Announced earlier today is a $25 million settlement between Eli Lilly and the State of Connecticut over allegations that the company illegally marketed Zyprexa for unapproved uses including dementia and ADHD. Lilly has already settled about $2.7 billion in other...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 29, 2009 11:48 AM
The Geodon portion of Pfizer's record $2.3 billion criminal and civil settlement with the Department of Justice yesterday was much larger than I'd thought. What's more, now that details of the settlement are out, it is clear that the company...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 3, 2009 12:01 AM
A new study is out in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety and it asserts that about 50 percent of the time doctors don't know the approval status of certain drugs and, apparently, think they are approved for indications for which they...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 21, 2009 11:38 AM
News is out that Lilly, makers of the antipsychotic Zyprexa, will pay $22.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the State of West Virginia which claimed that the company had illegally marketed the drug for unapproved uses including dementia...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 20, 2009 02:37 PM
I don't know whether to be discouraged by the following news (passed along by an eagle-eyed reader) or to consider it a trend that's to the good yet filled with all kinds of tricky implications, but a study out this...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 2, 2009 12:03 AM
Bloomberg has been doing a fine job with the recently released round of Zyprexa documents and the news just keeps getting more disgusting: Eli Lilly openly and illegally marketed Zyprexa off-label for dementia while the company knew from its own...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 15, 2009 12:03 AM
A new study is out in the journal Social Science & Medicine examining how Eli Lilly marketed Zyprexa, its controversial atypical antipsychotic, in primary care settings (meaning to non-psychiatrists). The paper's author, a psychology prof at Metropolitan State University in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 29, 2009 12:03 AM
I'm sure most of you are at least vaguely aware of the case of Richard Borison and Bruce Diamond, a psychiatrist and a researcher at the Medical College of Georgia who were found guilty of ripping off the college to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 27, 2009 12:03 AM
There's been a lot of criticism of ex-Abilify spokespatient/"Electroboy" author Andy Behrman in the wake of last week's front page Wall Street Journal article about his split with Bristol-Myers Squibb. The company had paid him a reported $400,000 to speak...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 19, 2009 12:01 AM
A new study is out in Health Affairs and I'll just let USA Today describe it: "About 15% of elderly Americans had prescriptions for psychiatric drugs in 2006, double the percentage a decade earlier, according to an analysis of federal...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 5, 2009 12:03 AM
There's apparently a real trend in our land toward excessive polypharmacy in our elders and this account from Peter Gott's "Family Doctor" syndicated column provides a spooky example of the trend and the overuse of psych meds to "calm" patients....
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 23, 2009 10:15 AM
There's been much news of conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and outside researchers possibly biasing the results of studies of psychiatric drugs over the last year. Notably, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has exposed researchers at Harvard University, Emory University...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 25, 2009 12:01 AM
I'm not making this up. Yesterday, California Attorney General Jerry Brown filed a criminal complaint against three officials at a Lake Isabella, California nursing home. From the Los Angeles Times: "The state attorney general's office contended in a criminal complaint...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 20, 2009 12:03 AM
As I noted on Friday, last week Eli Lilly and company specifically apologized to investors for act covered by its guilty plea to a criminal misdemeanor charge. The charge concerned Zyprexa and the company's illegal off-label marketing of the drug...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 2, 2009 12:03 AM
News is out that Eli Lilly today formally entered a guilty plea in court to criminal misdemeanor charges related to illegal off-label marketing of Zyprexa for dementia, a condition for which the diabetes-inducing atypical antipsychotic is not approved. The plea...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 30, 2009 11:48 AM
Bristol-Myers Squibb today announced its 2008 financials and its atypical antipsychotic Abilify, the object of much TV advertising over the last year, saw its sales hit $2.15 billion, a 30 percent jump over 2007's sales of $1.66 billion. The company...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 27, 2009 11:23 AM
Peter Gott is one of a few doctors who does a syndicated Q&A type of column nationally and he recently took up a question from a reader about whether Seroquel should be given to elderly person with dementia and whether...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 23, 2009 12:03 AM
News is out this morning that, as expected, Eli Lilly has settled claims against it by the feds and numerous states for illegal off-label marketing of its antipsychotic Zyprexa. The company also pleaded guilty to a criminal misdemeanor charge of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 15, 2009 10:59 AM
A new study is out in Lancet Neurology asserting that antipsychotics used to treat Alheimer's and dementia in the elderly may double the risk of death in patients. Use of these drugs in treating the elderly is off-label, but is...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 12, 2009 10:59 AM
Bloomberg is reporting that AstraZeneca officials knew of diabetes risks associated with the use of its atypical antipsychotic Seroquel as far back as 2000. The news comes thanks to a small set of documents presented in open court yesterday in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 5, 2008 09:09 AM
A fascinating study and accompanying editorial just came out in The Lancet yesterday. In the NIMH-funded study, researchers performed a meta-analysis of 150 studies of atypical antipsychotics--Zyprexa, Risperdal, Seroquel, etc.--where they had been trialed against a first generation antipsychotic in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 5, 2008 12:01 AM
I saw the Abilify for depression TV ad again over the weekend and I continue to be concerned about how Bristol-Myers Squibb is very craftily making the drug, an atypical antipsychotic, sound as if it's an anti-depressant. Nowhere in the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 10, 2008 08:45 AM
In the ongoing saga of members of Congress looking into pharma payouts to various researchers, Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) have asked J&J to turn over details of its payouts to physicians in regards to its antipsychotic...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 6, 2008 12:22 PM
I spoke yesterday with representatives from the Illinois and Oregon AG's offices, trying to clarify a few matters about yesterday's $62 million settlement with Lilly over off-label marketing of Zyprexa. The settlement covers 32 states plus the District of Columbia....
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 8, 2008 12:03 AM
I've been writing about the dirtiest little secret of antipsychotics for some time now, namely that they cause brain shrinkage in some (I'm assuming it's not all) patients and animal studies, so it was rather bracing yesterday to read this...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 18, 2008 12:05 AM
Well, this should be another nail in the coffin of antipsychotic use in the elderly: British researchers report in the BMJ that antipsychotic use in elderly patients increases the risk of stroke. What's more that risk increases even more with...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 29, 2008 12:03 AM
Between 2002 and 2007, Canadian health regulators issued a slew of warnings on the use of antipsychotics in the elderly--so did American regulators between 2004 and this year--and yet the use of drugs like Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel actually increased...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 26, 2008 12:03 AM
Remember when Congress reformed Medicare two years ago and enacted a deeply compromised law with prescription coverage for older Americans? Well, you just had to know Big Pharma--which lobbied very hard for the bill--was going to make billions off the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 24, 2008 03:11 PM
Of course this comes out right ahead of the holiday: US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein, who's been overseeing various class action lawsuits against Lilly over Zyprexa, today urged Lilly to settle all outstanding cases against it...worldwide. The company has...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 3, 2008 01:05 PM
I never thought I would read these words in the New York Times concerning anything to do with mental health. "Ramona Lamascola thought she was losing her 88-year-old mother to dementia. Instead, she was losing her to overmedication." OK, I'm...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 24, 2008 12:05 AM
I was just on a conference call with FDA officials wherein the agency announced it was adding a black box warning to first generation--aka, typical--antipsychotics concerning their use in elderly patients with dementia. The label will alert clinicians to "increased...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 16, 2008 01:09 PM
I really don't know what other headline to put on this Archives of Internal Medicine paper that came out yesterday from researchers showing that patients with dementia face a risk of death or other serious event at more than 3...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 27, 2008 12:05 AM
This is one of the most disgusting examples of the use of atypical antipsychotics in the elderly I have run across. British man develops dementia, is put in nursing home, which dopes him up big time on Zyprexa. About six...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 21, 2008 12:01 AM
Here's yet another study, this one from PLoS Medicine, establishing that the long-term use of antipsychotics is detrimental to the health of dementia patients. And by dementia, I mean Alzheimer's. "The researchers, from Kings College London and the Universities of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 2, 2008 12:05 AM
A report by a British MP, Paul Burstow, claims that the use of antipsychotics in patients with dementia is leading to 23,000 deaths a year in the UK, according to this account of the report in the Telegraph (London). This...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 1, 2008 11:24 AM
In a new study just out in The Lancet, Dutch researchers report that second generation antipsychotics (aka, atypicals) do not beat first generation antipsychotics in treating symptoms of schizophrenia in first-episode patients. And if they can't beat the old drugs...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 28, 2008 12:05 AM
The state now becomes the tenth in a string of states suing the maker of Zyprexa. It's the usual set of allegations, as WSJ's Health Blog notes, and then there is some eye-popping detail: "Connecticut is looking to recover more...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 12, 2008 12:05 AM
A civil trial brought by the State of Alaska against Eli Lilly over accusations involving its atypical antipsychotic Zyprexa is expected to begin in Anchorage tomorrow with jury selection. Last week, the trial judge tossed out a portion of the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 3, 2008 09:06 AM
UPDATE: Mere hours after I posted the following, AstraZeneca filed a supplemental new drug application for Seroquel XR, the extended release version of Seroquel, for treating depression under 3 different indications: monotherapy, adjunct therapy, and maintenance therapy in adult patients....
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 29, 2008 12:03 AM
The FDA psychopharmacological committee yesterday voted to recommend that the full FDA approve Lilly's new Zyprexa Adhera, a two to four-week long-acting injectable formulation of the company's Zyprexa. The drug now awaits approval by the agency for treating schizophrenia, likely...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 7, 2008 12:03 AM
Here's the second installment of my year-end wrap up. So much happened in mental health news this year that I broke it into two posts. 2007 was that busy of a year. The first part is here and now for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 27, 2007 12:01 AM
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has been looking into the atypical anti-psychotics for a few months. Now he's asking Lilly, AstraZeneca and Janssen/J&J to provide details of how they've marketed anti-psychotics for nursing...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 13, 2007 12:01 AM
The Wall Street Journal's blog had an account of its front-page article today on the use of anti-psychotics in dementia cases and linked to my work. (Thanks guys.) Read the comments on the blog to get some discouraging insights into...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 4, 2007 12:28 PM
The Wall Street Journal is just out with a front page article on the use of anti-psychotics in nursing home patients, literally hours after the BBC's "Panorama" ran a similarly-themed program in the UK. Here are some bits from the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 4, 2007 12:07 AM
I was tied up yesterday getting ready to leave town, so here's something I haven't done in two months or so--links to things I've found interesting recently. Not that there aren't about a bazillion other things I could link to....
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 26, 2007 12:01 AM
As I reported earlier, the State of Arkansas yesterday sued Janssen and its parent J&J over allegations concerning its atypical anti-psychotic Risperdal and how the company developed and marketed the drug. The lawsuit is a real eye-opener and confirms many...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 21, 2007 12:01 AM
The St. Petersburg Times had a fine and well-balanced article yesterday on just how well the use (off-label, I must stress) of atypical anti-psychotics in the elderly is going in America: not really well. The article quotes David Graham, an...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 19, 2007 12:05 AM
A new study in this month's Archives of General Psychiatry asserts that atypical, or second generation, antipsychotics used in patients with Alzheimer's disease produced about the same results as did placebos in the same patient cohort. Which is to say...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 6, 2007 12:07 AM
Late yesterday, the Department of Justice announced a settlement with BMS of allegations involving a range of drugs the company makes and markets, including Abilify. The company is paying $515 million. The allegations involving Abilify were these: "Second, the Government...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 29, 2007 12:36 PM
Late last week, Arkansas' Attorney General, Dustin McDaniel, informed legislators that his office is on the verge of suing the makers of Zyprexa, Seroquel, and Risperdal over off-label marketing schemes involving the use of their drugs in the state's Medicaid...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 24, 2007 12:05 AM
Last week, there was much media coverage of a large jump in adverse events reports and deaths due to the use--and, perhaps, misuse--or prescription drugs. Most of the coverage cited the general trend, noted how many thousands of deaths occurred...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 19, 2007 12:28 AM
That's according to this Canadian study which found that the anti-depressants worked as well as antipsychotics in calming agitation in elderly dementia patients. It was Celexa versus Risperdal in this small trial. I find it a bit puzzling that an...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 12, 2007 12:01 AM
As I noted the other day, the State of Montana has sued Eli Lilly for its marketing of Zyprexa. I obtained a copy of the complaint yesterday (1 MB .pdf here) and the allegations are intense and mostly revolve around...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 14, 2007 12:52 AM
Apologies for the late posting today. I was working on a long, cranky, experimental post for today last night and it just wasn't quite there yet. But that's OK because CL Psych has run into something in a recent issue...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 7, 2007 11:03 AM
During my flurry of work on Zyprexa this week, I have neglected to point readers to the excellent work CL Psych has done the last few days on Zyprexa and Eli Lilly's possible off-label marketing of the drug for use...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 22, 2007 12:01 AM
This is an extremely lengthy post, one that requires use of the extended entry below, as well as numerous links to various Eli Lilly internal documents. Eli Lilly and the FDA were contacted repeatedly to answer questions. Neither replied. Since...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 21, 2007 02:28 AM
Here we have yet another round of bad news for the atypical antipsychotics. In this case, the federal government's Agency for Research Healthcare and Quality is out with a study claiming that there is not enough evidence to support off-label...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 18, 2007 02:17 AM
Well, well, well. An internist in New York steps up to the plate and writes openly about how an Eli Lilly sales rep tried to coax him into prescribing Zyprexa: "Sitting across from my desk on the small blue couch,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 26, 2006 12:03 AM
As I suspected in my first posts (which I wrote Sunday afternoon), there would be more revelations forthcoming about Eli Lilly's behavior around Zyprexa. Here's one revelation from a second New York Times article: "Eli Lilly encouraged primary care physicians...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 18, 2006 12:54 AM
Wow. Let me just quote from the lede to the New York Times article on this: "The drugs most commonly used to soothe agitation and aggression in people with Alzheimer’s disease are no more effective than placebos for most patients,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 12, 2006 12:01 AM
It must be a rotten week to be Pharma exec or doctor. As I posted yesterday, an FDA advisory panel recommended that black-box warnings be placed on ADHD drugs due to 25 cases of heart related deaths. (It's amusing that's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 10, 2006 12:15 AM
Here's a news release on a calcium channel modulator that the company claims may work in treating acute mania. Apparently, it has also shown promise in treating dementia. I have no idea how a calcium channel modulator works--hell, I can't...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 21, 2005 01:08 AM
A reader commented earlier that the fate of geriatric psych patients is very discouraging. Often, they end up in state mental hospitals. Some have mental illness--and have been ravaged by it for most of their life. Others have dementia and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 24, 2005 01:08 AM
Here's more cause for concern and skepticism--not alarm, people!--on atypicals. From a study published in JAMA. Keep in mind that this was a meta-analysis of other clinical studies that have already been performed. In this case, the subjects were senior...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 21, 2005 01:12 AM