Healthy Skepticism Library item: 725

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

Associated Press.
Eli Lilly Said to Know of Prozac Risks
Associated Press 2004 Dec 31

Full text:

A British medical journal said Friday it had given U.S. regulators confidential drug company documents suggesting a link between the popular anti-depressant Prozac and a heightened risk of suicide attempts and violence.

The British Medical Journal reported in its Jan. 1 issue that documents it received from an anonymous source indicated that Prozac’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly & Co., was aware in the 1980s that the drug could have potentially troubling side-effects.

The company’s stock dipped 75 cents a share to $56.75 on light afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The journal said the documents, reportedly missing for a decade, had formed part of a 1994 lawsuit against Eli Lilly on behalf of victims of a workplace shooting in Louisville, Kentucky. Joseph Wesbecker, the gunman who killed eight people and himself in 1989, had been prescribed Prozac a month before the shootings.

Eli Lilly won the case, but later disclosed it had settled with the plaintiffs during the trial.

The journal said one of the records, dated November 1988, reported that fluoxetine, the generic name for Prozac, had caused “behavioral disturbances” in clinical trials.

The journal said it had turned the documents over to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which had agreed to review them.

The journal said the office of U.S. Congressman Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from New York, also was examining the documents to determine whether Eli Lilly had withheld data from the public and the FDA.

“This is an alarming study that should have been shared with the public and the FDA from the get-go, not 16 years later,” Hinchey was quoted as saying.

“To our knowledge, there has never been any allegation of missing documents from the Wesbecker trial or any other trial involving Lilly,” the company said Friday in a statement. Lilly said it had always been its objective to disclose data about the safety and efficacy of Prozac.

“Lilly has made several requests to the BMJ to obtain copies of the supposed ‘missing’ documents; we still await these documents,” the statement said. “We are surprised and concerned that a leading medical journal would not find it important to share these documents with us so that we could respond to the public in a meaningful way.”

The company said it has consistently provided regulatory agencies with results from both clinical trials and safety monitoring after the drug was approved.

“Based on this, Lilly believes that there is no new scientific information to review on this topic,” the statement said.

In an earlier statement to the journal, Eli Lilly said Prozac “has helped to significantly improve millions of lives.”

“It is one of the most studied drugs in the history of medicine, and has been prescribed for more than 50 million people worldwide. The safety and efficacy of Prozac is well studied, well documented and well established.”

In October, FDA ordered that all antidepressants carry warnings that they “increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior” in children.