A Xarelto bleeding lawsuit alleges a Virginia woman  suffered a life-threatening bleeding event after taking the drug.

The Xarelto bleeding lawsuit was filed jointly by Virginia plaintiff Julia Green and her husband. Green began taking Xarelto in July  2012, and continued taking the drug through October 2012 when she suffered a life-threatening Xarelto bleeding event. Green required emergency medical care to survive, according to the Xarelto side effects lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that Xarelto is inherently dangerous, that the drug’s makers were aware of this risk, and that drug makers promoted the drug anyway.

Xarelto is an anticoagulant, or blood thinner. Blood thinners make it harder for blood to clot. Under ideal conditions, blood clots can protect the body by preventing a patient from bleeding to death from minor injuries. However, when this process misfires, a blood clot can form within the body and block the blood supply to important organs and tissues like the brain and heart, causing strokes and certain types of heart attack.

Anticoagulants like Xarelto are designed to help people with risk factors for errant blood clots reduce their risk of these medical emergencies. However, all anticoagulants carry the risk of working too well, and preventing patients from forming clots when they need them, causing dangerous forms of uncontrolled bleeding like pulmonary bleeding and gastrointestinal bleeding.

Older anticoagulants like Warfarin can be reversed. A second drug, called a reversal agent, can effectively shut down Warfarin and related drugs if a patient experiences an uncontrolled bleeding event. In the case of Warfarin, a high dose of vitamin K can halt the bleeding. While Xarelto and newer anticoagulants have no known reversal agents, they have the economic advantage of being new enough that their patents have not expired — potentially generating greater profits for drug makers.

The Xarelto bleeding lawsuit alleges that the makers of the drug have deliberately promoted the drug in spite of concerns related to Xarelto bleeding. To support this allegation, the Xarelto lawsuit states that in 2013, Xarelto brought in more than $1 billion dollars in worldwide sales, the “blockbuster” benchmark in the pharmaceutical industry, and that Xarelto had more advertising, both in terms of dollars spent and pages, in the same time frame. This included direct-to-consumer marketing campaigns, one of which encouraged Green to use Xarelto in the first place.

The Xarelto Bleeding Lawsuit is Julia Green, et al. v. Janssen Research and Development LLC, et al., Case No. 5871, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.