Tell us, how often have you heard that a new drug is introduced in the pharma scene, and people are so hyped about it because experts and pharma companies make it sound like revolutionary, and then when the actual patients start taking it, there come the complications? How many times? It kinda has become a common thing in the last few years or so, and this Jardiance Lawsuit is of the same nature.
How Jardiance Got Stuck in All This Legal Matter?
For that, we must dive into the backstory here, and that actually goes back more than a decade. How? See, that was when Jardiance was granted FDA approval back in August 2014, which made it one of the newly released agents among a group of diabetes drugs called SGLT2 inhibitors. A hit? Well, you can say so, like, these drugs essentially trick your kidneys into excreting more sugar through your urine, so pretty much yeah, in a way, they help your body get rid of extra glucose. And that’s what a lot of people were hopeful about.
Overall, the concept of it sounds kinda smart, and it really is. And at that time, like a decade earlier, it was even considered a major breakthrough. But just a few years later, when a lot of people had already tried this drug, some complaints started coming up. Like, patients’ accounts experiencing severe adverse reactions started to surface, things like diabetic ketoacidosis (which is a condition where your blood turns very acidic), renal problems, dehydration, and even rare infections. That was the scary part for whoever was using this drug or thinking of switching to it.
And in reality, the FDA had already issued its first major warning in 2015 after coming across nearly 20 cases of ketoacidosis in people on SGLT2 inhibitors, one of which is Jardiance. Not a lot of patients saw or heard about that, and that maybe just because of the hype of this drug.
Then, in 2018, yet another warning came out, and this time it was serious, like it was about a rare flesh-eating bacterial infection called Fournier’s Gangrene. For those who may be hearing about it for the very first time, see, it is a terrible infection that mainly impacts the genital and perineal area. So far, the FDA found that a total of 55 cases of this infection were related to this class of drugs over a 15-year period. Though you don’t need to panic because it is kinda a very rare thing. You know, about one person in 62,000 every year! Even when this detail came out, no doubt, a lot of people started to panic because this matter got a lot of publicity back then.
How Has It Played Out So Far?
Let’s keep it simple. Jardiance was launched in 2014, and the FDA warnings started to appear a year later. Right? Going straight down the timeline, by 2018, the year of Fournier’s Gangrene reports, the litigation was already quite a lot.
And here’s the info you might not know, see, initially, law firms conducted investigations into hundreds of potential claims against the drug Jardiance and other medications in the same class, such as Farxiga and Invokana. What came next? At some point, a few of the law firms, Levin Law among them, ceased accepting new clients, which is an indication that the volume of active lawsuits likely decreased.
So far, we have not seen a large-scale class-action lawsuit settlement or a very big payout for the Jardiance drug in the news. You know, so far, the cases are mainly individual personal injury lawsuits where the plaintiffs are trying to prove that their specific injuries were caused by the drug. That’s all.
