Pfizer to pay $55m to settle Protonix case

Pfizer Inc will pay USD 55 million plus interest to settle charges that Wyeth promoted its acid reflux drug Protonix for unapproved uses and made unproven claims about the medicine, the US Department of Justice said on Wednesday.

The infractions took place between February 2000 and June 2001, long before the world's largest drugmaker acquired Wyeth in 2009 for $68 billion. Protonix, which belongs to a class of widely used medicines called proton pump inhibitors (PPI), has since gone off patent and is available in cheap generic versions as pantoprazole.

Protonix was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for short-term treatment of erosive esophagitis -a condition related to gastro-esophageal reflux disease, or GERD, that can only be diagnosed via endoscopy.

The Justice Department accused Wyeth of training its sales force to promote Protonix for all forms of GERD, which is far more common and likely to lead to significantly higher sales.

In addition, Wyeth allegedly promoted Protonix as the "best PPI for nighttime heartburn" even though there was never any clinical evidence that it was more effective than any other PPI, such as AstraZeneca's