Friday, October 5, 2007

Lilly Adds Label Warnings for Mental Illness Drug

Eli Lilly today added strong warnings to the label of Zyprexa, its best-selling medicine for schizophrenia, citing the drug’s tendency to cause weight gain, high blood sugar, high cholesterol and other metabolic problems.

For the first time, Zyprexa’s label now acknowledges that the drug causes high blood sugar more than some other medicines for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, called atypical antipsychotics.

Lilly previously argued that Zyprexa had not been proven to cause high blood sugar at a more frequent rate than its competitors.

Concern about Zyprexa’s side effects has been increasing since at least 2004, and Zyprexa’s prescriptions and market share have fallen sharply over the same period. As a result, the new warnings may have only a moderate impact among doctors and patients, said S. Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Bipolar Disorder Research Program at Emory University.

READ MORE @ NY TIMES