Editor's Notes:

There is one certainty in the ongoing debate surrounding a potential increase in heart disease risk for patients taking GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes medicine Avandia: No matter what the science says, lawsuits will pile up against the company in short order—and perhaps siphon billions of dollars away from drug research into years of costly litigation.

GlaxoSmithKline is expected to be hit with a wave of lawsuits from users of the diabetes drug Avandia, plaintiff's lawyers said on Wednesday.

Lawyers who bring product liability cases say they are fielding calls from Avandia users who are contemplating suing Glaxo, following a pooled analysis of trials in the New England Journal of Medicine this week that concluded the drug raised the risks of cardiac-related deaths and heart attacks.

Glaxo could face potential liability in "the tens of billions of dollars," said Barry Knopf, a plaintiff's lawyer and partner in the New Jersey law firm of Cohn Lifland Pearlman Herrmann & Knopf. "If the increased risk of cardiac death is as high as (the study) suggests, it should be possible to draw the connection to cardiac events" among people taking Avandia, "especially patients who had not had previous heart disease or heart attacks," he said.

Another plaintiff's lawyer, Perry Weitz of Weitz & Luxenberg in New York, said his firm has been in touch with Avandia users and is doing due diligence on the situation as it weighs whether to bring any suits.