Eli Lilly downplayed risks of Zyprexa

The drugmaker Eli Lilly has engaged in a 10-year battle to downplay the health risks of Zyprexa, whose chemical name is olanzapine, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia.

There were documents, given to the New York Times by a lawyer representing mentally ill patients, which show that Lilly executives kept important information from doctors about Zyprexa's links to obesity and its tendency to raise blood sugar levels in its users-- both known risk factors for diabetes.

It was proven that in Lilly's own published data, it told its sales representatives to play down in conversations with doctors.  It also showed that 30 percent of patients taking Zyprexa gain 22 pounds or more after a year on the drug, and some patients have reported gaining 100 pounds or more. However, Lilly was concerned that Zyprexa's sales would decrease if the company was more forthright about the fact that the drug might cause unmanageable weight gain or diabetes, which cover the period 1995 to 2004.

Since its introduction in 1996, Zyprexa has become Lilly's best-selling product, with sales of $4.2 billion last year, when about 2 million people worldwide took the drug.

Critics, including the American Diabetes Association, have argued that Zyprexa, is more likely to cause diabetes than other widely used schizophrenia drugs. However, Lilly has consistently denied such a link, and did so again on in December 2006 in a written response to questions about the documents. The company defended Zyprexa's safety, and said the documents had been taken out of context.

But as early as 1999, the documents show that Lilly worried that side effects from Zyprexa, would hurt sales.

"Olanzapine-associated weight gain and possible hyperglycemia is a major threat to the long-term success of this critically important molecule," Dr. Alan Breier wrote in a November 1999 e-mail message to two-dozen Lilly employees that announced the formation of an "executive steering committee for olanzapine-associated weight changes and hyperglycemia." Hyperglycemia is high blood sugar.

At the time Breier, who is now Lilly's chief medical officer, was the chief scientist on the Zyprexa program.

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