Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7104

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Eli Lilly Accused of Promoting Off-Label Prescribing of Zyprexa
Yahoo Finance 2006 Dec 18

Abstract:

Eli Lilly has been accused by state and federal regulators of marketing Zyprexa, by far its bestselling product, to patients for whom it is inappropriate and possibly dangerous. Lilly is suspected of trying to offset a drop in sales that might have resulted from Zyprexa’s side effects (weight gain and possibly diabetes) by promoting the writing of prescriptions to a wider spectrum of patients. Internal documents indicate that sales reps were encouraged to conceal the drug’s side effects and to suggest that the drug, which is approved for use only for schizophrenic and bipolar patients, ought to be prescribed for elderly patients with dementia as well — despite the fact that the F.D.A. warns that Zyprexa increases the risk of death among older patients suffering from that condition. Lilly also appears to have encouraged the prescribing of Zyprexa to patients suffering from depression, another condition for which it was not originally intended. Federal law forbids drug manufacturers from encouraging doctors to prescribe drugs to patients for whom their use has not been approved by the F.D.A., a practice known as “off-label prescribing.” Illegal or not, the campaign appears to have been effective: Zyprexa sales doubled to $3 billion between 1999 and 2002, and last year, Lilly sold $4.2 billion worth of Zyprexa to over 2 million people worldwide.