FDA Changes Chantix Label

Recent studies have indicated that Chantix can cause heart attacks, so the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has required a new warning be added to Chantix's label. Chantix is a popular drug used to help patients stop smoking.

The new label will inform the public that patients taking Chantix may face an increased risk of having an adverse cardiovascular event, especially if a patient already has cardiovascular disease. Based on the study results already obtained, patients taking Chantix were more likely to have an adverse cardiovascular event than those taking the placebo.

The FDA has said that it will continue to evaluate Chantix for safety. Patients who experience any adverse health events or side effects should notify their healthcare professionals and the FDA's MedWatch Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program.

This is not the first warning label that has been added to Chantix. In 2009, the FDA issued a black-box warning for Chantix based on the risk that patients would fall into depression or commit suicide after taking the drug.

The Chantix Insanity Defense

Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against Pfizer, the maker of Chantix, over the past few years for injuries patients sustained while having psychotic episodes linked to taking the drug. Pfizer has denied that Chantix causes any of these injuries.

But a 2010 study published by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices shows that some patients taking Chantix did commit violent and unprovoked aggressive acts while on the drug. And they were more likely to commit these acts within the first few weeks of taking the drug. Of the patients who showed violent tendencies while on Chantix, 93 percent no longer exhibited these violent tendencies after being taken off the drug.

Since first being released on the market in 2006, several studies have linked Chantix to neuropsychiatric injuries, causing behavioral changes, aggression, hostility, depression, agitation, rage, and suicide.

More recently, a woman in Vermont on trial for the murder of her husband has claimed that her use of Chantix caused her to drive their car into a tree, in an attempt to kill her husband and herself. Her attorneys are claiming that Chantix drove her to "try a violent and suicidal resolution by Chantix."

This is not the first time the Chantix defense has come up in a murder trial. In another case out of Vermont, a man claimed that Chantix caused him to think his mother was a police officer out to get him, so he shot her. She later died from her wounds. The defense allowed the man to get a plea deal in which the murder charge was downgraded to voluntary manslaughter.

If you or a loved one have suffered an adverse cardiac event or have suffered a neuropsychiatric injury while taking Chantix, call Dallas dangerous drug attorney Kay Van Wey today at 800-489-5082.