Attorney Bryan Aylstock

In a recent interview, Bryan Aylstock, a Florida attorney whose firm protects the rights of consumers who are seriously injured due to defective drugs such as Prempro, provided the following helpful consumer information about the drug, its link to breast cancer and the increasing number of lawsuits being filed against the manufacturer:

What is Prempro?

Prempro is a combination therapy of the estrogen and progesterone replacement drugs generally referred to as hormone replacement therapy. These drugs are used mainly for post-menopausal women to help replace some of the hormones that become deficient during that time. They became very popular in the 1970s and 1980s and continued to be used through the 2000's.

Prempro itself is a trade name drug for a Wyeth product that was a combination of both estrogen and progesterone, but in one pill. The Prem being for Premarin and the Pro being for progesterone. There are a number of other drugs that are used in combination. Doctors did not have to prescribe the Prempro pill. They could have also prescribed other combination therapies, such as Premphase, two different pills with Premarin and Provera or others.

Prempro's link to breast cancer

The issue with these hormone replacement combo therapy drugs is the risk of breast cancer, which was known by the drug companies for a long time before it became known to the general public. That has come out through internal documents that have been now made public in the various trials that have occurred involving these drugs.

The general public, and the physicians who were prescribing this combo therapy, really had no way to know of the increased risk of breast cancer, particularly with these combination therapies, until the World Health Initiative (WHI) actually stopped a study that it was doing on these drugs in 2002. It was an unusual step for them to discontinue the study midstream, but they did it because they were seeing alarming rates of breast cancer in the exposed group of these combination hormone replacement drugs.

Why the WHI study was so important

Following the WHI study, the number of women who were taking this combination therapy fell off dramatically in the United States. That is important because a lot of the scientific evidence that has come out since then has confirmed the findings of the World Health Initiative study. That study was based upon large-population samples where the scientists have actually looked at the rates of breast cancer in the United States and have found that they have dropped fairly dramatically since the use of these combination drugs has declined. So, there's a very strong causal link between the use of this combination therapy and the risk of breast cancer.

Litigation: Thousands of cases currently filed

In terms of the litigation, there are thousands of cases currently filed. Thus far, only a handful of these have been tried. However, now that those internal documents have become public, we've been able to show juries the evidence – which has resulted in multi-million dollar verdicts. In fact, the last trial resulted in an award of over $100 million.

So, this litigation has matured and individual cases have gotten stronger, both from a scientific evidence and liability standpoint. In other words, we've increased our ability to show that drug companies who were making money off these drugs, literally billions of dollars, knew that they had a problem and intentionally, or at least negligently, failed to disclose those problems to the individuals that were taking the drugs.

I would encourage anyone who took this combination therapy to make sure that they're checked regularly for breast cancer. If they develop breast cancer, talk with an attorney about their legal rights and what they can do to hold the drug companies accountable for what they did in conjunction with this product.

If you or a loved one has been injured due to the use of Prempro, contact an attorney to discuss your situation. The consultation is free, without obligation and strictly confidential. To contact a qualified attorney whose practice focuses in this area of the law, please click here.

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