A North Carolina man is suing Eli Lilly over its top-selling diabetes treatments Mounjaro and Trulicity, saying the drugmaker didn’t do enough to warn about serious side effects from the medications.
Frank Campbell Jr. says in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that he was left with debilitating nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain from gastroparesis after he started taking the drugs.
That condition means paralysis of the stomach, according to the Cleveland Clinic. It makes stomach muscle contractions weaker and slower than they need to be for digestion and causes food to sit too long in the stomach.
The 61-year-old Campbell attributes his symptoms to the drugs, known as GLP-1s, which his doctor prescribed in 2023. Campbell took Trulicity from January to May and Mounjaro from August to November of that year, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Marion Superior Court.
Campbell says Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. failed to provide adequate warnings, especially to prescribing physicians, about the possible side effects and didn’t do enough to evaluate those risks in clinical research before regulators approved the drugs.
Campbell argues that the labels Lilly put on its drugs are inadequate, and the company had a duty under the Indiana Product Liability Act to make sure Trulicity and Mounjaro would not cause unreasonable dangerous injuries like his stomach paralysis.
A Lilly spokesman said the company makes patient safety a top priority.
“We take any reports regarding patient safety seriously and actively monitor, evaluate, and report safety information for all our medicines,” spokesman Jared Shapiro said in an email. “Our FDA-approved labels clearly warn that Mounjaro and Trulicity may be associated with gastrointestinal adverse reactions, sometimes severe.
“We encourage patients to consult their doctor or other healthcare professional regarding any possible side effects they may be experiencing.”
Campbell is suing Lilly under the Indiana Product Liability Act and the Indiana Deceptive Consumer Sales Act.
He is requesting a jury trial, compensatory damages for healthcare costs and medical monitoring, punitive damages, legal fees, and other court-deemed relief.
Sales for GLP-1 drugs have soared in recent years as millions of people started taking them to manage diabetes, lose weight or treat other conditions. Mounjaro alone brought in nearly $23 billion in revenue for Lilly last year, or more than a third of the company’s total sales.
This article was first published by The Indiana Lawyer.
