New York, NY: Pfizer Inc, the maker of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) Prempro , has agreed to pay $330 million to resolve claims that the menopause drug caused breast cancer. The settlement brings to an end eight years of litigation including some 2,200 related Prempro lawsuits that alleged Wyeth, the company that developed Prempro and was subsequently bought out by Pfizer, knew of the cancer risk but was not forthcoming about it.
According to Bloomberg, over 6 million women used Prempro and other related menopause medications to treat symptoms such as mood swings and hot flashes. Then, in 2002, results from a study large cohort study, The Women's Health Initiative, showed a link to cancer.
Pfizer faced over 10,000 lawsuits alleging that Prempro caused breast cancer in its users. It has settled many of them in the past five months, Bloomberg reports. Those settlements include "8,000 cases consolidated in federal court in Arkansas and other cases in state courts in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Minnesota." (Bloomberg)
