Class Action Over Quincy Bioscience’s Prevagen Brain Health Claims Transferred to New York

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A proposed class action filed in August 2018 over Quincy Bioscience’s allegedly deceptive advertising and sale of purported brain supplement Prevagen has been transferred from New Jersey federal court to New York’s Southern district.

Filed on August 2, 2018, the case alleges defendants Quincy Bioscience Holding Company, Inc.; Quincy Bioscience, LLC; Prevagen, Inc.; and Quincy Bioscience Manufacturing, Inc. misleadingly represented Prevagen to be a clinically tested treatment that could improve memory and support healthy brain function. In truth, according to the lawsuit, Prevagen has not been clinically tested and does not provide brain and memory support.

As the 19-page lawsuit tells it, the only test sponsored by the defendants that may have been clinically randomized was the Madison Memory Study, which the case describes as “unreliable and flawed.” From the suit:

“Based on the data presented, Defendants primarily relied on one double-blind, placebo-controlled human clinical study using objective measures of cognitive function. The study involved 218 subjects taking either 10 milligrams of Prevagen or a placebo. The subjects were assessed on nine computerized cognitive tasks, designed to assess a variety of cognitive skills, including memory and learning, at various intervals over a period of 90 days. The Study shows that Prevagen does not improve memory.”

What followed, the case continues, was the defendants conducting “more than 30 post hoc analyses” of the study’s results. This methodology, according to the lawsuit, “greatly increased the probability that some statistically significant difference would occur by chance alone.” Even though most of the defendants’ ad hoc analyses confirmed the initial study’s results, the case states, the few positive findings that popped up on isolated tasks for small groups were touted by Quincy Bioscience despite the fact that they did not represent reliable evidence of the drug’s efficacy.

The lawsuit and notice of removal can be read below.