The death of a woman whose treatment with an unregistered drug was part of a Middlemore Hospital study will be analysed afresh by a coroner, 11 years after her death.
Deputy Solicitor-General Virginia Hardy has ordered the reopening of the cold-case of Ngamata Taio-Tekapo, who died aged 47 in 2004.
Auckland coroner Sarn Herdson decided not to hold an inquest and recorded the underlying cause of Mrs Taio-Tekapo's death as chronic kidney disease caused by gout and linked to liver damage.
But now, after a campaign by medicines importer Lance Gravatt, an organic chemist whose medical-student son Zac died after delays in treating him for meningococcal disease at Auckland City Hospital in 2009, Ms Hardy has ruled there are facts that were not available to Ms Herdson which warrant a fresh inquiry.
Mrs Taio-Tekapo's Middlemore doctor put her on the drug benzbromarone, which was withdrawn in Europe in 2003 because of liver toxicity. It is not registered in New Zealand. Doctors can legally prescribe unregistered drugs "off label", but carry greater responsibilities to explain their risks and benefits.