British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has agreed to settle another lawsuit in California that alleged its discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer, the latest in a series of settlements to end costly litigation.
Reuters reports that the case, which was set down for trial on 20 February, will now be dismissed.
GSK said the terms of the settlement were confidential and that it did not admit to any liability.
Sales of Zantac, approved more than 40 years ago, were halted by some manufacturers and pharmacies in 2019 over concerns that its active ingredient, ranitidine, gradually degraded to form a chemical called NDMA. While NDMA can be present in low levels in food and water, research has found it causes cancer in larger amounts.
After the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pulled Zantac and its generic versions off the market in 2020, it set off a wave of lawsuits.
As of October last year, GSK still faced about 79 000 cases related to Zantac in the US, and analysts estimate total settlement costs for the company of around $5bn.
Reuters article – GSK settles another Zantac lawsuit in California (Open access)
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