A number of scientific studies support plaintiff claims that Byetta causes pancreatic cancer.
In 2010, researchers wrote in the journal Diabetes Care that “there is a plausible risk that long-term recipients of GLP-1-based therapy may develop asymptomatic pancreatitis… and worse, a minority of individuals treated by this class of drugs may develop pancreatic cancer.”
Research published in 2011 in the journal Gastroenterology found a reported event rate for pancreatic cancer that was 2.9 times greater in patients treated with Byetta compared to those treated with other diabetes medications.
Adverse event data from the Drug Commission of the German Medical Association found an unusually high incidence of pancreatic cancer associated with Byetta. The data showed an average of 12.2 months between the start of treatment with Byetta and a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
A case-controlled epidemiological study on the effect of GLP-1 drugs on the pancreas published in JAMA in 2013 concluded that an association between GLP-1s and pancreatitis “may be causal.” This is significant because antecedent pancreatitis is the most common risk factor for subsequent pancreatic cancer.