Sanofi has settled about 4 thousand lawsuits in the US surrounding the drug Zantac – Kommersant

The French pharmaceutical company Sanofi has reached an agreement to settle about 4 thousand claims filed against the company in the United States in connection with the sale of the drug Zantac, reports Reuters. The company did not disclose financial details of the deal, but noted that it did not admit guilt as part of the settlement of the lawsuits. The stomach ulcer drug Zantac has been sold around the world since the 1980s, and in 1988 Zantac became the best-selling drug in the world. However, in 2018, reports emerged that the active ingredient in Zantac, ranitidine, may contribute to the development of cancer.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency have found no evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship between these drugs and cancer. However, most pharmaceutical companies themselves decided stop sale of drugs containing ranitidine.

Sanofi began marketing Zantac only in 2017, and already in 2019 recalled it due to concerns that it could cause cancer in patients. At the same time, the French company changed the formulation of the drug, replacing ranitidine with famotidine. In 2020, the FDA demanded the recall of such drugs from American pharmacies. Since then, numerous lawsuits have been filed in American courts against companies that produced Zantac at different times: Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKlein, Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Sanofi’s current settlement covers lawsuits filed in most US states, but not in Delaware, where about 20,000 lawsuits have been filed against the French company. The local court must decide whether claims that Zantac can cause cancer are scientifically substantiated. In 2022, a Florida federal court ruled that such claims were baseless and dismissed claims from 50,000 drug users.

Kirill Sarkhanyants