Pfizer accused of suppressing Neurontin study
October 9th, 2008 joshua
A Boston lawsuit against Pfizer Inc. and its nerve pain drug, Neurontin, has revealed systematic manipulation of a study which said the drug was not as effective as the drug company suggested.
A British researcher had threatened to go public with a European study which suggests Neurontin was ineffective at suppressing chronic nerve pain. Pfizer, the suit alleges, worked to silence that researcher, and keep the study out of the public eye. Meanwhile, sales of Neurontin rose.
To counter the report, Pfizer launched an advertising campaign touting the benefits of the drug. A much smaller report was published in a medical journal and an ad was shown before in-flight movies, The Boston Globe reports.
Sales of Neurontin rose to $2 billion a year, when all it was originally proposed to treat was epilepsy. A generic drug ended Neurontin’s reign as one of the top-selling drugs in the U.S in 2004.
The Euro study was titled, 224, but was never published in whole. Instead, Pfizer used portions of it combined with other reports. In discovered emails, Pfizer executives campaigned to suppress the 224 study because it was not positive.
“We must delay publication of 224, as its results are not positive,” wrote one marketing exec, John Marino, in a Sept. 2000 email.
The suit further alleges Pfizer manipulated much of the information made public on Neurontin, and it alleges this misinformation led physicians to write hundreds of millions of prescriptions for a drug that simply was not effective.
Pfizer, in the face of this evidence, stands behind its ethics regarding Neurontin.
