Millions of Americans are experiencing harmful visual impairments and blindness due to a common medicine used in treating interstitial cystitis. Elmiron is the medicine in question, and since March 2020, charges have been brought against the producers for failing to alert users to potential harm.
Here is all the information you necessary about Elmiron.
What is Elmiron?
Since the drug’s initial FDA approval in 1996, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), has developed and sold it. Elmiron is one of just two medications in the world that is sold and authorized to treat interstitial cystitis, a condition that affects over 12 million individuals in the United States. Users of said top medication take it to treat their chronic abdominal, pelvic, and genital discomforts and pains and to make their urination more urgent and frequent. Most Elmiron users are females, and many have used it for over ten years.
What negative effects have users of Elmiron reported?
Elmiron’s toxicity was first discovered through a series of tests from 2015 to 2017 by Atlanta’s Emory Eye Center specialists, who found a pattern in six individuals’ aberrant macula damage.
Pigmentary maculopathy, a disorder that causes severe vision problems, including impaired vision, excessive sensitivity to dark and light, and difficulties adjusting from outdoor light to interior light, was identified in the patients. As the illness advances, blindness is also possible.
Similar evidence of long-term Elmiron use injury was observed in all six patients. In light of this, the Emory Eye Center released preliminary research in 2018 that claimed Elmiron was hazardous to the retinal tissue of the human eye, specifically injuring the retinal pigment epithelium. This cell layer feeds the retina.
Elmiron has been connected to the following symptoms and conditions: regions of visual impairment, trouble reading, trouble seeing items up close, and vision fading.
According to reports, roughly 25% of individuals who used Elmiron for a prolonged period showed symptoms of maculopathy or serious eye impairment, including blindness.
This disorder that poses a hazard to vision may occasionally be identified as:
- Retinopathy
- Vision impairment
- Macular degeneration
- Halo vision, etc
Are Elmiron products being recalled?
Despite research linking long-term IC medication usage to possibly irreversible eyesight loss, Elmiron has not yet been formally recalled. Janssen included a warning label in the productions around June 2020. FDA has not yet made any statement of intentions to ask Janssen to recall the medication as of September 2020.
Legal Case for Eye Injury
Many people are pursuing legal action over Janssen because they believe Janssen failed to notify customers about potential vision problems. Until Janssen included a warning concerning pigmentary maculopathy, the drug package for Elmiron did not mention any dangers about eye injuries or a higher likelihood of eye illness, according to claims.
In 2018, one of the initial case reports was published in The Journal of Urology. Based on the IC Network, researchers discovered that prolonged medication use caused “damage to the eyes and the overlying retinal pigment epithelium.”
More research has been conducted after that publication to ascertain if this is a real side effect of the medication. Findings have been inconsistent, but there is evidence to suggest that prolonged use of Elmiron might result in eye damage like pigmentary maculopathy, which could be mistaken for macular degeneration.
Based on past cases, the average Elmiron lawsuit settlement amounts are expected to exceed $150,000, depending on the level of vision impairment.
Conclusion
You may be eligible to file a claim and be entitled to receive compensation if you were prescribed Elmiron and later discovered to have an eye disease. Elmiron cases are now being filed for patients who used the medication and had issues with their vision, such as vision problems, maculopathy, and retinopathy.
