Closing arguments heard in Wyeth hormone drug trial

Last Updated: 2006-09-12 11:01:13 -0400 (Reuters Health)

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (Reuters) - Closing arguments in the first of a wave of prescription drug trials were heard on Monday as Wyeth defended its hormone replacement therapy Prempro against claims that it increased the risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer.

"Wyeth was negligent in not testing the drug and not knowing the truth about their drug," Zoe Littlepage, an attorney for plaintiff Linda Reeves, told the jury at the federal court in Little Rock.

But Wyeth's lawyer Jane Bockus told the panel of nine women and three men that the company was warning doctors as early as 1991 of a reported increase in malignancies among patients taking its hormone replacement therapy and that it should not be prescribed for more than a year without a follow-up exam.

Reeves testified she took Prempro for more than eight years.

"Clearly the label contained adequate information," to allow doctors to decide on patient treatment, Bockus said.

The trial is the first of 5,000 lawsuits filed against Wyeth for Prempro.

Reeves, 67, and her lawyer told the jury at the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas that Prempro nourished a breast tumor, for which she had to undergo a mastectomy.

Prempro combines the hormones estrogen and progesterone to treat the effects of menopause and has been available in the United States since 1995.

The drug company met its ethical and legal obligations in determining the treatment's safety, its lawyers argued before U.S. District Judge William R. Wilson, Jr.

Reeves is seeking an unspecified judgment that could exceed $1 million, her lawyers have said.