The Accutane timeline stretches back to 1930, when dermatologists and others began using Vitamin A to combat cases of severe acne. In the years afterward, severe acne also received such treatments as elevated doses of fat soluble Vitamin A and, in some cases, an oral antibiotic. Yet none of these acne treatments proved to be wholly successful, and the scourge of severe acne continued.
The Accutane timeline then jumps to the year 1979. That’s when which Hoffman-LaRoche, a giant pharmaceutical corporation, registered a copyright on the drug Isotretinoin. (The company also is known as Roche Pharmaceuticals.)
Isotretinoin is an extremely potent and high-dosage Vitamin A supplement, so in a way, it’s linked to the acne treatments which were introduced in 1930. But Isotretinoin is far more powerful, and it showed it could fight if not eliminate acne in those suffering cases of severe acne.
When the National Institute of Health studied Isotretinion and found that it fought severe acne with great success, Hoffman-LaRoche registered the drug and developed an acne medication called Accutane, whose chief ingredient was Isotretinion. Then in 1982, Accutane -- featuring Isotretinoin -- went on the market for unsuspecting consumers who simply wanted to cure their severe acne.
Though Accutane’s target was severe acne, some physicians prescribed it for patients with less severe acne anyway. Indeed, many people with common cases of acne wound up using the extremely powerful acne drug Accutane. In part that’s because Accutane produced such strong results in fighting acne and became quite popular as a pharmaceutical product.
How popular? Since its introduction in 1982, Accutane has been used by an estimated 12 million people around the globe, and among those have been 5 million Accutane users in the United States alone. The acne drug went by different names in different areas -- In Europe, Accutane became known as Roacccutane -- but it was the same drug, nonetheless.
The Accutane timeline next extends to 2002, when Roche lost its 20-year patent on the drug Isotretinoin. This allowed competing pharmaceutical companies to unleash their own forms of generic Accutane. These became known as Claravis, Amnesteem and Sotret, and each also contained the powerful active ingredient Isotretinoin.
Cut to 2009, when Roche stopped selling Accutane in the USA (but not in many other countries). The reason? Roche claimed it was losing too much business to generic Accutane suppliers. But in truth, Roche also was facing mounting Accutane lawsuits in America.
And why was that? Because Isotretinoin was proven to be extremely harmful, causing a variety of damaging Accutane side effects, with many impacting the gastroinestinal tract.
Such Accutane lawsuits have proven to be successful for plaintiffs. In fact, jury awards so far have totalled $56 million for victims of Accutane.
Roche knew Accutane was harmful and knew such lawsuit would be forthcoming, yet continued selling the acne drug. Why? Perhaps because Roche made $1.2 billion off Accutane sales in the year before it discontinued the acne medication.
Now Roche can dip into the vast fortune it made from 27 total years of Accutane sales and easily can afford to pay settlements in defective drug lawsuits.
How has Accutane proven to be harmful? In many ways, but chief among them may be an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) such as ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease, also known as Crohns disease. Accutane victims may even have to have their colon removed in surgery as a result of the Accutane side effect injury.
An IBD has no cure, making this injury debilitating and lifelong. That’s why injured Americans are demanding fair and fitting financial compensation for their losses, including medical bills, in an Accutane lawsuit.
For that purpose, they can find an experienced defective drug lawyer in their state via the national attorney service known as Accutane-Lawsuit-Lawyer.com. In this way victims can seek economic recovery for their medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering as a result of using defective drug Accutane.
Contact Accutane-Lawsuit-Lawyer.com today to explore your prospects for an Accutane lawsuit. Send us the free case evaluation form on this Web page or call 1-800-339-0606, and a legal representative will respond to you shortly. Then you can begin the process of gaining financial compensation for your Accutane injury, as some Accutane victims already have done successfully.