For at least a year, Eli Lilly provided information to doctors about the blood-sugar risks of its drug Zyprexa that did not match data that the company circulated internally when it first reviewed its clinical trial results, according to company documents.
The original results showed that patients on Zyprexa, Lilly’s pill for schizophrenia, were 3.5 times as likely to experience high blood sugar levels as those taking a placebo, according to a February 2000 memo sent to top Lilly scientists. The memo is one of hundreds of internal Lilly documents provided to The New York Times by a lawyer in Alaska who represents mentally ill patients.
But the results that Lilly eventually provided to doctors until at least late 2001 were very different. Those results indicated that patients taking Zyprexa were only slightly more likely to suffer high blood sugar as those taking a placebo, or an inactive pill.
Another Lilly report, from November 1999, shows that Lilly found after examining 70 clinical trials that 16 percent of patients taking Zyprexa for a year gained more than 66 pounds.
The New York Times article was apparently based on documents which were leaked from an ongoing Zyprexa products liability lawsuit. Copies of the leaked Eli Lilly documents appeared (or were linked to) on a variety of websites such as this one. Links to the documents were also posted on a wiki at http://zyprexa.pbwiki.com. On January 4, 2007 Judge Jack Weinstein of the E.D.N.Y. enjoined use of the wiki to further disseminate these documents. The estimable Fred von Lohmann of EFF is representing the wiki poster. Read more at the associated EFF webpage.
–Ann Bartow
Update: The NYT has a new article up about this issue here.
