US pharmaceutical giant Merck will consider settling a limited number of legal cases over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, the compnay has confirmed.
The drug's link to heart attacks and strokes has spawned thousands of lawsuits and last week's $253 million jury verdict in Texas.
As recently as Wednesday, company lawyers were still saying they planned to fight each personal-injury lawsuit.
On Thursday morning, New Jersey-based Merck said that as of August 15th it faced nearly 5,000 lawsuits alleging patients were harmed by the drug - nearly 600 more cases than in its prior update five weeks earlier.
The total includes about 150 potential class-action suits that could include many plaintiffs. "Cases we'll be looking at concern ingestion of Vioxx for 18 months or more" by patients with limited heart risk factors, Kent Jarrell, spokesman for the company's legal team, said.
While Merck could decide to fight some cases aggressively, Mr Jarrell said "we could decide to settle" others.
"We are not entertaining the notion of a global settlement."
Merck withdrew the popular arthritis treatment from the market when its own study showed Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attack or stroke when taken for at least 18 months.
Mr Jarrell said the company did not know how many patients took Vioxx for at least 18 months and also had low risks of cardiac problems but expected it to be "a relatively small number".
The combination of those circumstances would strengthen the patients' cases.
"Merck is stepping up now and saying, 'Maybe we should compensate people who were harmed after 18 months'," of Vioxx use, said Mr Chris Seeger, the lawyer prosecuting Merck in the next Vioxx trial in a state court, set to start on September 12th in Atlantic City.
According to reports today, the number of Irish Vioxx users taking lawsuits against Merck has doubled to 200 in the last week.
AP