Skip to main content

Benicar Injury Videos

Below are some of our videos explaining the potential dangers of Benicar, and especially the connection to sprue-like enteropathy. To learn more about the types of injuries that have been linked to this medication, and the legal claims that have been filed, click Benicar.

 

Read Transcript

Papantonio: A Japanese drug maker is agreeing to pay up to $300 million to settle 2,000 U.S. cases against them. These cases, which amount to over 2,000, are accusing the company of failing to warn users that its blood pressure medication, Benicar, can cause serious gastrointestinal illness. Joining me to talk about this is Daniel Nigh.

Daniel, first of all, I guess, kudos to the corporation that is willing to stand up and say, okay, let’s try to make this right with consumers. We’re not used to seeing that in this business. Most pharmaceutical manufacturers, no matter what their conduct is, will do everything they can to avoid making the consumer that may be suffering some illness from their product, to avoid actually paying that consumer for those kinds of damages. I think I want to begin this by saying kudos to the management of this corporation, who said we saw something wrong, we’re trying to correct it. What’s your take on that, Daniel?

Daniel Nigh: I agree. It’s nice to see that the company has realized the mistake that’s been made here and realized the number of people who have been injured by this. We believe that there’s going to be upwards of 2,500 claims that are made as a result of the problems with using Benicar.

Papantonio: Tell us, exactly what was Benicar used to treat? This is a very popular medication, and what were the results of that treatment?

Daniel Nigh: It is. Benicar is designed to treat for somebody’s hypertension, high blood pressure. What we’re seeing is that it’s a blockbuster drug. There’s over a billion dollars in revenue for this drug. It’s a very popular drug. There’s been numerous years where they’ve sold over a billion dollars in revenue alone.

Papantonio: What’s the science behind the drug? What’s happening? What do these studies show about the potential bad effects that Benicar has been able to demonstrate with its use?

Daniel Nigh: After the Benicar is ingested, when it’s being metabolized in the small intestine, it kills off the villi in the small intestine. The villi are the red blood cells that are responsible for absorbing the vast majority of food and water into our bodies. For these patients, when their villi is killed off, all their food and water is running right through their body. Of course, it causes massive diarrhea, but it’s so much more serious than that.

A person not being able to absorb their food and water into their body is causing severe malnutrition, dehydration, and we’re oftentimes seeing our clients landing in the hospital as a result of renal failure and other very significant problems.

Papantonio: Celiac disease, it actually resembles a celiac disease, from what I understand. That’s not just a short-term problem, that’s a long-term problem for some of these patients, isn’t it? Oftentimes, they become completely disabled for long, long periods of time with a celiac type of disease.

Daniel Nigh: That’s right, it does mimic celiac disease, because celiac disease also kills off the villi inside of somebody’s body when they ingest gluten. This has a similar reaction, and there are a lot of clients out there who may still not realize that Benicar is causing their problems. They were told by their doctor that they have celiac disease, whereas the entire time, it very well could have been that it’s just Benicar.

When they go off the Benicar, your villi will oftentimes regenerate and then you’ll be able to start to absorb food and water again. We have clients who have been hospitalized upwards of over 90 days in the hospital, never realizing that it was Benicar the entire time. They thought they had celiac disease. Once they were finally informed that Benicar was the culprit of their problems, they got off the Benicar and they saw a substantial improvement thereafter.

Papantonio: What I find so remarkable about this particular fact situation, Daniel, is that you, I remember you finding these facts, you finding this connection between Benicar and these types of gastrointestinal, very serious gastrointestinal diseases. I just have to ask myself, why wouldn’t a doctor, why wouldn’t the doctor who is in the business of prescribing medicine, how does it happen that they typically aren’t up with the latest information about the bad illnesses that might be caused by any particular drug? How does that happen that the very GP that might be treating this person doesn’t even know that there’s tons of material out there on the market that says this is what you need to be aware of? How does that happen?

Daniel Nigh: It’s really quite surprising. The warning label was changed to reflect that it can cause these spur-like enteropathy changes or serious gastrointestinal issues inside of a person. We’re seeing all the time that, even as of today, people are still on the Benicar, they’re asking their doctors about this problem, the doctors are just downplaying it, they don’t understand that Benicar could be the culprit of their serious gastrointestinal issues.

I think what’s happening is a general practitioner has so many different medications that they’re prescribing day in and day out, that they’re not realizing the side effects of this issue. The other thing is, the people that are treating for the problem, the gastroenterologist, those treaters are not the ones responsible for prescribing this medication. When that occurs, we oftentimes see that the information doesn’t trickle down to the right folks.

Papantonio: Isn’t that another part of it? You’ve got somebody sitting at home, they see advertisements on television. As they’re watching the nightly news, typically they’re watching 11 drug company advertisements just in the nightly news. The only other country in the world that even allows drug companies to advertise is New Zealand. Aren’t we seeing the bad effects of that? Aren’t we seeing where, used to be, a doctor had to understand something, they had to do the research, they had to do the hard work to figure out, what was the drug for this person?

Now we have patients walking into the doctor’s office saying, ‘I want this drug because I saw it on the nightly news last night. I’d like to try it.’ Isn’t that a huge part of the problem here, that we’ve got, they’re selling drugs like they sell soap in the United States, and they don’t allow this to happen any other place except New Zealand. It’s a disaster for patients, and for doctors, if you think about it, isn’t it?

Daniel Nigh: That’s exactly right. Doctors are getting it from all directions now. They’re getting it from patients coming in, requesting certain drugs that they saw in a commercial. The other route is the sales reps of the pharmaceutical companies are very aggressive, because they’re making a profit themselves on everything that they can get the doctor to sell. That’s the other part of the equation that becomes a real problem. Pharmaceuticals are all about sales and less about treatment.

Papantonio: Daniel, thanks for being out there. Thanks for your hard work on this case. But for your efforts, and for a corporation that is reasonable, they do want to take care of the consumers they’ve affected, and again, I say kudos to that corporation. Thanks for joining me.

Daniel Nigh: Thank you, Pap

 

Read Transcript

Mike: The drug industry's in trouble again. This time, for hiding the dangers of a blood pressure medication that's destroying the intestines of its patients. The drug's called Benicar. Joining me to talk about this latest blockbuster drug is Daniel Nigh. Daniel Nigh, another dangerous drug. You are our go to person for these stories, and every time I hear another one, I just go, "When the hell is the FDA going to do their job? When is this administration going to make the FDA do their job?" It all has to do with appointments, doesn't it? This president, this administration could appoint a person to make sure the kind of thing that we're about to talk about doesn't happen. Tell me this story. This is another outrageous story.

Daniel: There's no doubt, Pap. Every time, what we see is revolving door. The FDA, and the pharmaceutical company. We see the same people go from the pharmaceutical companies to the FDA, and back. Obviously, they've got the same purpose, and the same purpose is to get money for these manufacturing companies. Today, what we're seeing is, we've got a company known as Daiichi Sankyo. It's a Japanese manufacturer that also has a subdivision in the US. What they have's, they got a drug called Benicar. Benicar is causing, in some folks who are taking the drug, massive, chronic diarrhea, that some of these folks have suffered for years, and had no idea that the drug was even causing it.

Mike: Just to be clear, we're not just talking about a drug that causes diarrhea. This causes death. This actually causes something that looks like a Crohn's Disease. It causes something that it affects the entire body, systemically, doesn't it?

Daniel: That's right. These folks who are going through this, they have no idea what the problem is. The doctors that are in the emergency room, the doctors are treating for Crohn's Disease. They're treating for ciliac. They're treating for IBS. Everything under the sun. They can't treat them, oftentimes.

Mike: What is this medicine? Why do people take the medicine?

Daniel: Actually, it's to treat high blood pressure. That's one of the other things, as well, is that there are many other alternatives to treat high blood pressure, so that if somebody were notified, "Hey, this problem's causing chronic diarrhea." What's odd, is that people could just stop taking the medicine, and they would've been better. They oftentimes can become better.

Mike: It's really more than that. It's a chronic dysfunction in the digestive system. I don't want people listening to this report, and think, "Oh, well it's just a matter of chronic ... " No. This is something that can shut down your digestive system permanently.

Daniel: That's right.

Mike: What ends up happening, is they go to the doctor, they have problem, the doctor clears it up. They come back home, they start taking Benicar again, for high blood pressure, when there are 50 other drugs they can take, that don't cause these kinds of problems, and they go back into another chronic episode. Tell me about some of the cases you've seen. How bad are they?

Daniel: The other thing is, having gone through years and years of this chronic diarrhea ... I've got clients who have 10 to 20 bowel movements a day, and they've gone through this for years. What happens is, they have massive dehydration. They will drop 70 pounds in less than a year. As a result of this, I even have a couple of clients who I represent the families of the person who died in the hospital, in the ER, renal failure, liver failure, kidney failure, because the organs shut down after going through this for so long, and suffering such dehydration and weight loss over a quick period of time, or long period of time, that the organs will shut down. That's the risk.

Mike: It's something called a rebound effect, isn't it? In other words, the system is ... You clear your system of it, you're in the hospital, the doctor doesn't know why you're there. The doctor thinks you have Crohn's Disease, IBD, they think you have some type of very serious kind of intestinal issue, you get out, you think everything's fine, start taking the Benicar again, and nobody ever puts it together, because there was no warning. Nobody told anybody, because the damn FDA, again, didn't require that this company making Benicar, this Japanese company making a god-awful amount of money, here in the United States, selling this product, nobody required that they do, in the United States, what they have to warn about in other countries. Did I get that right?

Daniel: That's absolutely right. This drug was released in 2002. The FDA waited all the way until July of 2013 to finally require Daiichi Sankyo to put a warning on their label, saying that there's these massive, chronic diarrhea and dehydration can occur, as a result of taking this product. It waited them 11 years, and only after the Mayo Clinic found this association did they finally adopt that warning label change.

Mike: Isn't part of the problem that the reintroduction of the Benicar, after the problem may have cleared up episodically, the reintroduction actually gets to where it affects the stomach lining, it affects the intestinal walls. You have dehydration in the intestinal walls, in fact, all of the organ systems. What you're going to hear, is you're going to hear Benicar say, "Oh, this is just a minor problem." No. No, it's not. It's a very serious problem that has resulted in death. It's resulted in long term, chronic illness from this. Am I overstating that at all, Daniel? Explain ... Pick up with that idea.

Daniel: No. Absolutely not. Not overstating that at all. There are some clients who have just the worst of symptoms. Some have passed away. Some, they continue. I represent a client or two that feeds through a PEG tube. We've got multiple other clients who had multiple visits to the emergency room, 30, 40 emergency room visits, or hospitalizations in the last three years. As a result, these are folks who may have lost their job, as a result of it. They may have had organs that have deterioration as a result of it. The other thing is, is that they will treat, because the doctors don't know what the problem is, they will give them all sorts of other medication, trying to treat them for other [diagnosises. 00:06:11] Those other types of treatment can also cause them severe problems, such as taking steroids in large dosages.

Mike: This is a case that's in early development, but just looking at this, what is you call on how long this company has known about the dangers of Benicar, and just simply hasn't told anybody?

Daniel: It's really hard to tell, but the key is, is that they clearly must've known about it before the 2012 Mayo Clinic study. There's all sorts of reports to the FDA, reports to the manufacturer that show that they knew of some association between these two, that there's lots of clients who are suffering from chronic diarrhea and dehydration, as a result of taking this product, so, clearly, they knew about it beforehand.

Mike: Their decision is, "Hey, we're making money. It'll be a long time before anybody really finds out about this. If we're making a billion dollars a year, and we can sell this thing for ten years, it may cost us a billion dollars in the long run, but we're going to make a lot of profit in the process." That's the way I see this Benicar case developing. Anyway, Daniel Nigh, thank you for joining me. Keep us posted on this. This is not a minor case at all. This is a very serious case. Unfortunately, the FDA had dropped the ball even once again.

 

Read Transcript

The FDA recently announced in July 2013 that the popular high blood pressure medication Benicar could cause intestinal problems known as sprue-like enteropathy. Symptoms of sprue-like enteropathy include severe chronic diarrhea with substantial weight loss. The enteropathy may develop months to years after starting Benicar, and sometimes requires hospitalization.

This FDA announcement came after a published 2012 Mayo Clinic study foundation an association between patients talking Benicar and patients developing sprue-like enteropathy. Dr. Joseph Murray, the leading author of the Mayo Clinic study, explained that they initially thought the patients had celiac disease because their biopsies showed features very much like celiac disease. However, the treatment for celiac disease, a gluten-free diet, did not ease these patients' symptoms at all. Eventually these patients were taken off Benicar, and all of these patients showed substantial improvement.

However, by the time the proper treatment was discovered, many of these patients had suffered extreme diarrhea symptoms for months or even years. As a result of dehydration, several of these patients had to be hospitalized. In addition, even after the proper treatment was discovered for these patients, several patients had already suffered irreversible damage.

Some of you watching this video may be talking Benicar, have suffered from severe diarrhea symptoms for months or years, and your physicians may not have found the connection between your talking Benicar and the sprue-like enteropathy symptoms you are suffering. This sprue-like enteropathy is a rare disease and a rare occurrence from talking Benicar. Before discontinuing your Benicar, make sure you consult with your physician.

However, if you are taking Benicar and have gone to a gastroenterologist or been hospitalized for severe diarrhea symptoms you need to speak with an experienced drug litigation attorney like myself immediately. You may be entitled to compensation and you need to act immediately to preserve your legal rights.

 
Customize This