(CercleFinance.com) – GSK said on Thursday that it was determined to defend itself “vigorously” against the complaints filed in the United States in the context of the dispute over the drug against gastric acidity Zantac, which it was the first to market in the US market in the 1980s.
In a press release published last night, the British pharmaceutical group said it took note of the filing, with several federal courts and state courts, of some 3,000 complaints from patients linking their cancer to the consumption of Zantac.
For its part, GSK emphasizes that its work, like that of the FDA or the European Medicines Agency, has not revealed any direct causality between taking ranitidine, one of the ingredients of Zantac, and the development of cancers.
“In November 2019, the FDA determined that the levels of NDMA contained in ranitidine products were comparable to those present in certain common food products such as grilled or smoked meats,” insists the group.
If these remarks allowed the GSK title to rebound by 5% on Friday, after losses of 10% yesterday and more than 5% on Wednesday, investors do not seem completely reassured.
‘Although the outcome of the proceedings is not yet clear given that the trial has not yet started, history shows that such disputes can result in payments reaching more than 10 billion dollars’, recalls Amandeep Goyal, analyst at AlphaValue.
‘Knowing also that the powerful pharmaceutical lobby has begun to show some signs of weakness in recent years, this unfavorable scenario may well become a reality’, adds the professional.
‘That said, we can expect pharmaceutical companies to rely on strong legal defences,’ he concludes.
GSK, then called Glaxo, was the first laboratory to launch Zantac in the United States in 1983 before obtaining non-prescription drug status in 1995.
The product was then acquired by Pfizer, via its subsidiary Warner Lambert in 2000, before being acquired in 2006 by Boehringer, which then sold it in 2017 to Sanofi, until its withdrawal from the market two years later.
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