Celebrex Pharmaceutical Injury Claims
Celebrex Drug Recall Litigation
Celebrex is the third in a family of popular prescription painkillers to be linked to a higher incidence of heart attacks. On April 7, 2005, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked Pfizer Inc. to include a “black box” warning – the strongest possible – on the Celebrex label. This action came on the same day that Pfizer removed another, similar product – Bextra – from the market at the urging of the FDA and six months after Merck & Co. withdrew its popular painkiller Vioxx. The news concerning Celebrex, a top-selling medication used largely by arthritis sufferers, emerged in 2004 from a study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, which was testing the effect of Celebrex on certain tumors. What it discovered instead was that patients who took Celebrex were more than twice as likely to suffer heart attacks. (The cancer study was halted.) More than 26 million people have taken Celebrex, whose 2004 sales reached $3.3 billion. Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx are all COX-2 anti-inflammatory drugs. Merck withdrew Vioxx from the market after its own study showed that Vioxx patients suffered roughly twice the number of heart attacks and strokes. A deluge of lawsuits followed the drug's withdrawal by people who claim to have suffered severe heart attacks and stroke, many of them represented by Kline & Specter.
Some five weeks after Vioxx was pulled from the market, the American Heart Association released a study showing that patients who took Bextra were - similar to those who took Vioxx - more than twice as likely to suffer heart attacks or strokes.
In the Celebrex test, patients took daily does of 400 and 800 milligrams to see if the drug could reduce certain tumors. But what the study discovered was that the patients using Celebrex had 2.5 times the risk of suffering a cardiovascular event as opposed to patients given a placebo.
Background: Celebrex, Vioxx and Bextra all work by inhibiting a protein called COX-2 that has been linked to inflammation. Celebrex and Vioxx were both introduced in 1999 and instantly became top-selling drugs for Merck and Pfizer, respectively. Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, introduced Bextra in the United States in 2001.
Kline & Specter, P.C. is a national pharmaceutical litigation law firm. We represent Celebrex side effects victims throughout the United States . Click here to visit our Celebrex web site. Find out about more about Kline & Specter including our Doctor/Lawyer Team and our Notable Cases.
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If you or a loved one has been harmed by Celebrex or another a defective drug, you need a law firm with the resources and the experience to bring you justice. Please call or e-mail the Celebrex heart attack and stroke attorneys at Kline & Specter. We'll evaluate your claim for free and we don't get paid unless you do. Our expertise will help you get the compensation you deserve.
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This page was last updated on January 31, 2007.
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