SEREVENT and ADVAIR The popular asthma drugs Serevent and Advair have been linked to life threatening asthma episodes. The FDA has required GlaxoSmithKline to add new warnings to Serevent's and Advair's boxes after Glaxo halted a large trial in which more Serevent patients experienced life-threatening asthma episodes, including deaths, than patients on a placebo. In the study, 36 patients taking Serevent died from asthma or had life-threatening attacks.

MERIDIA Meridia is the brand name of a popular diet drug manufactured by Abbott Laboratories. Since it's approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on November 22, 1997, it is estimated that 8.6 million people worldwide have used Meridia®. The FDA estimates that 20,000 prescriptions for Meridia® are filled every week in the United States .

CRESTOR Crestor is a member of a class of drugs commonly referred to as "statins" used to lower cholesterol. AstraZeneca originally filed its application with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in June of 2001. The application was delayed because of safety concerns revealed during clinical trials, which included reports of kidney damage and Rhabdomyolysis, a potentially life-threatening condition which causes muscle cells to breakdown.

ACCUTANE The FDA has received reports of 66 suicides and 1,373 cases of psychiatric problems among Accutane users as of early December, 2000 according to a report in USA Today. Accutane's package warning first stated potential relationship between Accutane and depression in 1986. Although French officials required that Hoff-LaRoche add the risk of suicide to the package insert of the European version of Accutane in March 1997, the FDA did not require such a change in the USA until 1999.

FOSAMAX: Approximately 3 million women in the United States take the popular drug Fosamax to treat bone conditions like osteoporosis. Fosamax is an oral biphosphonate that researchers have linked to a serious bone disorder known as osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ). Other biphosphonate medications Zometa, Aredia, and Actonel. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently suggested that ONJ is a risk of all biphosphonates, including oral medicine like Fosamax as well as IV drugs. Some scientists are concerned that long term use of biphosphonates like Fosamax can interfere with the body's ability to keep a healthy amount of calcium in bones. If you have taken Fosamax or any other biphosphonate you should consult your doctor prior to having teeth pulled or other oral surgery, as this could lead to serious medical problems like ONJ.

If you believe you or a loved one has been injured while using any of these medications, please consider contacting a lawyer to discuss the situation further. The law firm of Watson Jimmerson is prepared to assist you in evaluating these matters in a professional and efficient manner.

VIOXX ALERT: On September 30, 2004, Merck announced a worldwide withdrawal of its anti-inflammatory drug, VIOXX®, following information that people taking VIOXX® are two times more likely to have heart attacks and strokes than people who take other inflammatory drugs, such as naproxen. Vioxx® is one of a class of anti-inflammatory drugs strenuously marketed as being more effective, with fewer side effects than other, older drugs, including such over-the-counter medications as ibuprofen.

BEXTRA ALERT: According to the preliminary results of a study presented at the American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans on November 9, 2004, the incidence of heart attacks and strokes among patients given the anti-inflammatory medication BEXTRA® is more than double that of patients given a placebos. After presenting the results at the AHA meeting, Dr. Garret A. Fitzgerald of the University of Pennsylvania stated, "The magnitude of the signal with Bextra is even higher than what we saw in Vioxx." Dr. Fitzgerald added, "This is a time bomb waiting to go off."

If you or a loved one has suffered a cardiovascular event such as a stroke or heart attack while taking Vioxx or Bextra, we urge you to consider contacting a lawyer to discuss the matter further. Watson is actively engaged in VIOXX® litigation against Merck & Co. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, and we are prepared to evaluate new cases. Please see the following page for important information about other popular prescription drugs.

PACEMAKER AND ICD ALERT: On June 17, 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that Guidant Corporation had recalled certain implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICD's) and cardiac resynchronization defibrillators. Guidant Corp. is an Indiana-based world leader in the design and development of cardiovascular medical products. Then on June 24, 2005, Guidant Corp. issued a second safety advisory to warn doctors that many of its devices may malfunction and pose serious cardiovascular risk.

More recently, on January 23, 2006, Guidant Corporation announced that many of their pacemaker products may experience product failure due to faulty hermetic seals in 54,000 pacemakers manufactured from October 19, 1998 to December 5, 2000. This is an expansion of prior warnings and could result in an FDA recall. Hence, these particular devices could require surgical removal from patients, as opposed to mere monitoring for health problems. St. Jude pacemakers have also been the subject of recent FDA warnings and scrutiny.

If you have a pacemaker or defibrillator manufactured by Guidant or St. Jude you may wish to speak to one of our lawyers about these recent warnings and recalls.