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The Associated Press

02-21-2007

A jury in Philadelphia has awarded $3 million to an Ohio woman who claimed a hormone replacement drug made by Wyeth caused her breast cancer.

Jennie Nelson, 67, of Dayton, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001 after taking Prempro for five years to treat symptoms of menopause. Her lawyers said Wyeth knew for decades the drug could cause breast cancer, but failed to warn patients.

More than 5,000 women have sued New Jersey-based Wyeth over its hormone drugs Premarin and Prempro. Wyeth has won two cases and lost two cases, which have been heard in Arkansas and Philadelphia.

Both drugs remain on the market and carry the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and both continue to be prescribed annually to hundreds of thousands of menopausal women.

But the lawsuits pending against Wyeth accuse the company of minimizing the drugs' risks.

Wyeth said it would appeal Tuesday's ruling. It maintains that it is impossible to prove that Prempro caused individual cancer cases.

"We respectfully disagree that there is any scientific basis to support the jury's finding of a causal link between Wyeth's hormone therapies and the plaintiff's breast cancer," Wyeth's attorney, Barbara R. Binis, said in a statement.

Nelson originally won a $1.5 million jury award in the fall, but a judge declared a mistrial. The second trial began Jan. 11.

"The jurors in this case understood how important it was to evaluate all of the evidence, and to let Wyeth know that dangerous products need adequate warnings," Nelson's lawyer, Ken Suggs, said in a statement.

Wyeth's pharmaceutical division is based in Collegeville, Pa.