By Ransdell Pierson
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Merck & Co (MRK) said on Thursday that more than 97 percent of eligible U.S. claimants had elected to participate in its $4.85 billion proposed Vioxx settlement, an adequate number to trigger funding of the program.
"The company expects that the distribution of interim payments to qualified claimants will begin in August and will continue on a rolling basis until all claimants who qualify for an interim payment are paid," Merck said in a news release.
The Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based drug maker earlier had said it would not commit itself to the settlement until at least 85 percent of eligible patients elected to participate.
To be eligible for the proposed settlement, patients or their survivors had to have filed a Vioxx product liability lawsuit in the United States for alleged heart attacks, stroke or death or have signaled officially their intent to do so.
Vioxx had generated sales of $2.5 billion a year before the arthritis and chronic pain pill was withdrawn from U.S. drugstores almost four years ago, when a Merck study showed that long-term users had twice the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Merck said on Thursday that more than 48,500 of the approximately 50,000 people who had registered eligible injuries had enrolled in the program.
Last year the company took a pretax charge of $4.85 billion for the proposed settlement.
Personal-injury lawyers representing former Vioxx users agreed to the settlement after Merck triumphed in a high percentage of court battles with plaintiffs who said the medicine had harmed them.
A very large clinical trial of Vioxx conducted almost a decade ago showed the medicine caused about a fourfold higher risk of heart attack than the widely used painkiller naproxen.
Even so, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowed Vioxx to remain on the market, and Merck launched a splashy advertising campaign that over a period of years helped turn the product into one of the world's biggest-selling drugs.
Merck unexpectedly withdrew Vioxx in September 2004 after a twofold higher heart attack risk was seen in a smaller trial, meant to determine whether the drug could prevent polyps that raise the risk of colon cancer.
Industry analysts say the FDA has become far more careful about approving new medicines in the wake of the Vioxx withdrawal and criticism of the agency's oversight of the medicine.
Merck shares were down 31 cents at $36.32 in morning New York Stock Exchange trade.
(Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
