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Woman's Death Leads To Wrongful Death Suit Against Crestor
A woman's mother has filed a 10-count lawsuit against the company that makes Crestor, a drug used to lower cholesterol. She claims that the drug was responsible for the death of her daughter.
The lawsuit was filed by Alexis Koenig of Pennsylvania in behalf of her daughter, Amira Micklin. When Micklin died, she had sustained major kidney damage as well as atrophy of the muscles which Koenig claims was caused after she began taking the drug.
Koenig is now asking for compensatory and punitive damages following the collapse of her daughter on October 24th, 2003, which led to brain damage. Crestor's manufacturer, AstraZeneca, has been named as the defendant in the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, AstraZeneca did not fully disclose all the risks associated with the drug as well as the safety and effectiveness of it.
Crestor is a drug that works to cut down on the production of a cholesterol-producing enzyme in the liver that can lead to clogged blood vessels. It falls within a class of drugs that are known as statins.
AstraZeneca has been very successful with Crestor, and they are continuing to see growth with the product. Crestor is the sixth drug of its kind to be approved by the FDA, which is was in August of 2003, only two months before Micklin died.
According to the lawsuit, Crestor carries the risk of causing kidney toxicity, which is not present in other statins on the market.
Crestor also is being accused of causing muscle damage, which has been known to lead to rhabdomyolysis, especially when taken in conjunction with other cholesterol lowering drugs and cyclosporine.
Studies have already shown that Crestor is linked with rhabdomyolysis.
Micklin was prescribed Crestor after she began suffering from a hematuria, or blood in her urine.
The lawsuit states that AstraZeneca should not have released Crestor until they had performed more testing to ensure that the drug was safe. Also, the company is being accused of ignoring the data they did have, as well as safety reports, and selling a dangerous product anyway.
The complaint wants to prove that AstraZeneca acted with negligence and disregard for the safety of the patients and that they should be forced to pay damages.