New York Metformin Injury Lawyers

Metformin, sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. under the name Glucophage and also available generically, is the most widely used drug for treating type-II or adult-onset diabetes.

On Wednesday - May 15, 2002, it was reported that doctors are wrongly prescribing this medication to patients with heart failure or kidney failure, putting them at risk of deadly complications. It should not be used by patients who are taking drugs for kidney failure or heart failure. But a team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that 22 of 100 patients they picked at random who were taking Metformin had one or both of the conditions. "We are concerned that these patients may be at risk of a serious medical condition known as lactic acidosis, which can be life-threatening," Dr. Cheryl Horlen, who led the study, said in a statement. Lactic acidosis is a rare metabolic condition and it kills half the patients who develop it. It is so dangerous that metformin tablets carry what is known as a "black box" warning -- a bold and easy to find block of text in the package insert -- describing the danger. But evidently doctors are not paying attention, Horlen said in a letter to the Journal of the American Medicaler-Lambe.