Dow Jones Newswires | Abbott Laboratories cut about 175 U.S. pharmaceutical sales representative positions earlier in March while shifting resources in the business, a company spokesman confirmed Wednesday.

The Abbott Park, Ill., company has about 83,000 employees worldwide.

The cuts came shortly after Abbott closed its $6.2 billion acquisition
of Belgium-based Solvay Pharmaceuticals, but are not related, said
Abbott spokesman Scott Stoffel.

Meantime, the cuts preceded Tuesday’s news that the Food and Drug
Administration requested more details for a proposed drug called
Certriad, which is a combination cholesterol drug co-developed by Abbott
and AstraZeneca PLC (AZN). Despite the FDA’s “complete response letter”
on Certriad, “there’s no plans for any additional” sales-force cuts,
Stoffel said.