AstraZeneca pushed salespeople to tell U.S. doctors its antipsychotic drug Seroquel didn’t cause diabetes more than two years after warning physicians in Japan of possible links to the disease, internal documents show.
The London-based drugmaker issued a letter to Japanese physicians in November 2002 that said AstraZeneca had received 12 reports that Seroquel users were diagnosed with high blood-sugar levels over a 21-month period, according to company documents unsealed last week in connection with litigation over the drug.
“Since February 2001 when Seroquel started to be marketed, 12 serious cases (including 1 death) of hyperglycaemia, diabetic ketoacidosis and diabetic coma where causality with the drug could not be ruled out have been reported,” AstraZeneca officials said in the letter.
Almost three years later, AstraZeneca sales managers were instructing company representatives to tell U.S. physicians that “the available data has not established a causal link between diabetes and Seroquel,” according to a transcript of an August 2005 voice-mail unsealed last week.
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