By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) -The plaintiff in the first lawsuit over the heartburn drug Zantac to go to trial has agreed to drop his case for now, according to his attorney and GlaxoSmithKline Plc, one of the drug companies named in the case.
The announcement on Tuesday came days after shares of GSK, Sanofi SA, Pfizer Inc and Haleon Plc were hit by investor concerns about thousands of lawsuits linking the drug, which U.S. regulators pulled from the market in 2020, to cancer.
The first trial in one of those lawsuits had been scheduled to begin next Monday in Illinois state court. The plaintiff, Joseph Bayer, alleged that he developed esophageal cancer from taking over-the-counter Zantac.
“For personal health reasons, he is not able to go to trial at this time,” Alexandra Walsh, an attorney for Bayer, said in an email. “But, under Illinois law, he has the right to refile his case any time in the next year.”
“The overwhelming weight of the scientific evidence supports the conclusion that there is no increased cancer risk associated with the use” of the drug, GSK said in a statement.
Zantac, originally marketed by a forerunner of GSK, has been sold by several companies since the loss of patent exclusivity in the late 1990s, including Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim and Sanofi. Haleon, spun out as an independent company last month, comprises consumer health assets once owned by GSK and Pfizer.
The 2020 recall followed an investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration into whether Zantac’s active chemical, ranitidine, causes levels of a probable carcinogen N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) to rise in users’ bodies.
About 2,000 lawsuits are consolidated in federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida, where a hearing on what expert evidence will be allowed in trials is scheduled for next month.
(Reporting by Leroy Leo in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni and Marguerita Choy)
