The Utah Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca over allegations they failed to disclose side effects, notably diabetes, caused by their antipsychotics - Risperdal and Seroquel, respectively - and improperly marketed the pills, therefore, causing the state’s Medicaid program to overpay for the medications. However, the lawsuit only says “large sums” were spent without specifying how much the Medicaid program may have overpaid for the drugs.

In arguing its case, the state charges the drugs were promoted for unapproved uses, such as treating the elderly for dementia, anxiety, sleep disorders, depression and other behavioral disorders not caused by schizophrenia or bipolar I disorder; treating children and adolescents for general mood and behavior disorders, ADD, ADHD, depression, sleeplessness, and for the general treatment of autism; and treating the general patient population for other mood and sleep disorders and symptoms not caused by adult schizophrenia, bipolar I disorder and autism.

This litigation is not a new phenomenon. Over the past few years, numerous states have filed suit against drugmakers over antipsychotic marketing. Two years ago, for instance, Utah filed suit against Lilly, which sells Zyprexa (you can read the view of a Utah state official about the issue here). At the same time, several states formed a consortium to research prescribing targeted at children (see this).

More recently, Pfizer, Lilly and AstraZeneca all paid huge fines to settle federal government allegations of off-label marketing (see this). And Omnicare, the nation’s largest nursing home pharmacy, allegedly solicited and received kickbacks from J&J in exchange for agreeing to recommend that physicians prescribe Risperdal to nursing home patients (read this and this). Meanwhile, there has been a host of civil lawsuits filed against J&J and AstraZeneca (see here and here).