The FDA announced on Sept. 21 that it will continue to review the drug Multaq. This announcement coincides with the fact that more and more doctors and specialists are reporting that they are not prescribing it anymore due to safety concerns. The drug has been linked with liver failure and also has been found to make some patients’ heart conditions worse.
Multaq was originally approved in 2009 as a treatment for temporary atrial fibrillation and was meant to be a safer alternative to amiodarone, which is a generic medicine that has also been linked with serious liver and lung risks. However, one thing that is not widely known about the drug is that there was a higher death rate linked to the drug even before it was approved. For it being a relatively new drug to hit the market, it already carries with it a boxed warning that says it can double the patient’s chance of death for the most sick patients.
What’s more, before it was given the approval by the FDA, reviewers “questioned the results of a second trial suggesting that the drug could ward off hospitalization, saying the standards for hospitalization can vary.” The reviewers went on to decide that their concern “presents a problem that the label alone may not be able to cover.” Yet, even with these warnings, the FDA approved it and claimed that it did help some patients where alternative drugs failed them.
Since then, safety concerns have just gotten worse as liver failure began to be reported. In July of this year, the FDA announced that it was going to review a recent clinical trial that had to be stopped after patients started dying and having strokes while taking Multaq. That isn’t even the worse thing about Multaq; many are also starting to question how effective the drug is. One example of this comes from cardiologists from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center who stated that “generic alternatives work better than Multaq.”
If you or a loved one have suffered from liver failure or a worsening heart condition after taking Multaq, contact Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting drug injury cases and may be able to help you receive money for your injuries.