Articles Tagged with ranitidine and cancer

Zantac Litigation: What If You Only Took the Generic Ranitidine?

Published on: September 21, 2020 | By Clay Hodges

Generic drugs are a big deal in the United States. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 90% of prescription medications are filled with a generic drug. One of the reasons so many people take generic medications is the cost savings. From 2007 to 2016, generic medications saved $1.67 trillion. A generic version of Zantac has been sold since 1997.

But how is a generic drug different from a brand-name drug? Does this difference matter in the Zantac litigation? If so, where does innovator liability come in? I’ll address these questions in the following blog post. But first, a brief update into the Zantac litigation.

Current Status of Zantac Litigation

Zantac Complaint, Part 3: Four Ways Ranitidine Tranforms into NDMA

Published on: September 11, 2020 | By Clay Hodges

In Part 2 of this series we looked at the development of ranitidine (brand name Zantac), its rise as a hugely profitable heartburn drug, and the discovery that the carcinogen NDMA was found in rantidine, eventually leading to its recall and removal from the market. In this Part 3 I discuss how ranitidine can evolve into the cancer-causing chemical NDMA.

Nanitidine Can Form NDMA in the Stomach

When ranitidine enters the stomach, it can interact with “nitrites.” Nitrites are chemicals often found in spicy or salty foods. Food producers add nitrites to certain foods to prolong shelf life. All the way back in 1981, Dr. Silvio de Flora published a study showing that when ranitidine is introduced to nitrites it can lead to “toxic effects.” Dr. de Flora cautioned that if people take ranitidine, they should eat foods low in nitrites and avoid ranitidine near meal times.

Zantac Master Complaint, Part 2: Invention of Ranitidine, Discovery of NDMA

Published on: September 1, 2020 | By Clay Hodges

In Part 1 I discussed the concept of the Master Complaint in product liability multi-district litigation, and we also set the table with the plaintiffs and the many defendant-companies involved in the Zantac litigation. Now let’s keep grinding through the Zantac Master Complaint. The story of Zantac, the presence of the carcinogen NDMA, and the links to cancer can be found in the Factual Allegations, beginning on page 39 of the Master Complaint. (Note that I use the brand-name Zantac and its actual name ranitidine mostly interchangeably in this post.)

These are the key elements of the story:

Inventing and Selling Ranitidine

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