California court allows HIV drug personal injury cases against Gilead

The Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles rejected all but one of Gilead’s arguments to dismiss the HIV/AIDS patients’ legal theories against the company’s TDF-based HIV/AIDS drug, that cause permanent damage tokidneys and bones.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation noted in a press release on Wednesday,  that in May 2018, California patients living with HIV filed a personal injury lawsuit against Gilead Sciences Inc. seeking to hold the Bay Area drug maker accountable for actions around its promotion of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate’s (TDF’s) drug formulation, knowing a safer alternate, tenofovir alafenamide (TAF), existed; failure to warn patients of the damaging side effects of TDF; and active misrepresentation of TDF’s efficacy and risks.

AHF is funding the litigation and will not receive any financial recovery from the lawsuit in excess of its actual costs.

The cases also assert that Gilead deliberately and maliciously suppressed from the market its alternate and newer formulation of the drug, TAF, in order to extend the patent life—and sales—of its existing medications that included TDF. Gilead earned over $18 billion in net profit in 2015.

At the time of publishing this article, Gilead has not issued any statements on their website.