ALSO NOTED: ASCO already churning out news; Lilly, FDA ironing out Zyprexa shot problems; and much more...

Long lasting Zyprexa?

Lilly needs to get a grip on issues with it's original formula.
About 30 state attorneys general have subpoenaed documents detailing Lilly's sales practices for Zyprexa as part of a civil investigation under state consumer protection laws.

Experts say Zyprexa qualifies for a MedGuide warning:
(1) The labeling would definitely help prevent serious adverse events;
(2) Few patients would be willing to take the drug and risk developing diabetes given that numerous studies have shown Zyprexa to be no more effective than the older class of antipsychotics that do not cause diabetes; and
(3) Most patients on Zyprexa would learn that the drug is not FDA approved to treat the condition they have.

That´s true, for example in nordic countries it is aggressively promoted not only for bipolar disease treatment but also as a preferred choice for long-term follow-up treatment (one size fits all, start it and continue...possibly forever). As a result, virtually every patient has gained ten if not twenty kilograms of weight and most of them improve when dosage will be reduced, stopped or subject switched to something else, even if it is some old-fashioned neuroleptic, as actually many of them do not have active psychiatric symptoms and only adverse events. When the main promoting arguments base on small benefits (something like"you get out of hospital 3 days earlier"), even 60 years old chlorpromazine can treat for example manic patient nearly as effectively and without risk of diabetes or metabolic syndrome. This drug may be useful maybe primarily for difficult to treat schizophrenic patients, and even in this case 30 years old clozapine looks still superior