Benicar lawsuits claiming users experienced gastrointestinal side effects while taking the blood pressure drug manufactured by Daiichi Sankyo and sold by Forest Laboratories are being consolidated before a federal judge in New Jersey.

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) consolidated the Benicar lawsuits before U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler of the District of New Jersey on April 3 with a transfer order covering 15 Benicar lawsuits from six states, but the JPML said it is aware of an additional 23 potential tag-along cases.

These Benicar lawsuits similarly claim Benicar may cause serious gastrointestinal problems, including sprue-like enteropathy. The Benicar lawsuits also claim the defendants knew about Benicar side effects and risks but purposely misled the public and advertised Benicar without referencing its health risks.

Defendants Daiichi Sankyo and Forest Laboratories opposed the centralization arguing that centralization was not warranted because each of the Benicar lawsuits present different issues, such as the plaintiff’s medical history and the treatment decisions by that person’s physician, according to the JPML.

But the panel said the defendants’ argument is “not convincing,” because differences of that type “are not an impediment to centralization where common questions of fact predominate.”

The Benicar makers also argued that the creation of a Benicar MDL would prompt the filing of “new copycat cases without diligent efforts to ensure the viability of claims, in an attempt to gain leverage based on a large number of cases.”

The MDL panel disagreed and consolidated the Benicar lawsuits in the New Jersey federal court is appropriate as a transfer venue because it is the home state of both Forest and the U.S. division of Daiichi.

About Benicar

Benicar is part of a family of drugs used to lower blood pressure. Although the drug has been on the market for a number of years, concerns over serious gastrointestinal side effects have been linked to Benicar have recently surfaced. Some patients taking Benicar have developed a condition known as sprue-like enteropathy, which includes symptoms like chronic diarrhea, weight loss and abdominal discomfort.

Individuals that developed these Benicar symptoms are often misdiagnosed with Celiac disease or other gastrointestinal disorders, resulting in years of unnecessary medical treatment.

Those individuals often continue taking Benicar, risking permanent damage to the intestines. Some patients have also been hospitalized because of their Benicar side effects.

The FDA approved Benicar in 2002. In July 2013, the federal agency issued a warning after finding a link between Benicar and 23 cases of sprue-like enteropathy. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic first reported the connection in August 2012. They were concerned about the lack of warnings about gastrointestinal illness from Benicar.

In 2012, nearly 2 million patients were prescribed Benicar to treat their high blood pressure. It is unknown how many of them developed sprue-like enteropathy, but recent studies suggest the side effects of Benicar are not as rare as was previously believed.

Benicar attorneys contend that the current number of Benicar lawsuits could just be scratching the surface in terms of Benicar litigation against Daiichi Sankyo and Forest Laboratories.