AstraZeneca Starts To Settle Seroquel Lawsuits

From a story in Pharmalot: Another day, another large settlement. Rather than ring up tabs for expensive lawyers and confront the possibility of bad publicity indefinitely, drugmakers are choosing to settle gobs of product-liability lawsuits with big settlements. Such moves, of course, appease anxious investors and allow senior execs to focus on the important stuff, such as their compensation packages developing new meds. Over the past few weeks, GlaxoSmithKline has been practically racing to resolve Avandia and Paxil lawsuits (see here and here). And Eli Lilly has done the same with its Zyprexa antipsychotic. Now, AstraZeneca has agreed to pay $2 million to settle more than 200 lawsuits charging its Seroquel antipsychotic causes diabetes, marking the first time the drugmaker agreed to settle such claims. To read the full story, go here. UPDATE: It is now reported that AstraZeneca has agreed in principle to settle nearly 4,000 claims that charged the drugmaker with hiding the risks of its Seroquel antipsychotic and links to diabetes. Go here for the full story.