Mer­ck KGaA to pay over $3M to pa­tients af­ter drug for­mu­la­tion change-up trig­gered com­plaints

End­ing a five-year saga, France’s high­est court has or­dered Mer­ck KGaA to pay out more than $3.6 mil­lion to more than 3,000 pa­tients to set­tle a long-run­ning dis­pute over the re­for­mu­la­tion of one of its drugs.

The French high court, la Cour de cas­sa­tion, was Mer­ck’s last re­sort to ap­peal its case.

In March 2017, Mer­ck KGaA re­moved lac­tose from the drug, a wide­ly-used re­place­ment drug for hor­mone thy­rox­ine in pa­tients with hy­pothy­roidism, in a bid to make it eas­i­er to tol­er­ate. Mer­ck KGaA then re­placed lac­tose with sug­ar al­co­hol man­ni­tol and cit­ric acid. The switch, ac­cord­ing to lawyers for the plain­tiffs, caused pa­tients to have se­vere side ef­fects such as mem­o­ry loss, hair loss, weight gain and even thy­roid can­cer. On top of that, pa­tients claimed that the drug was no longer as ef­fec­tive.

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