A South Carolina woman alleges Lipitor caused her diabetes and has joined the already massive, and still growing, collection of consumers who have filed Lipitor lawsuits.

According to her short form Lipitor lawsuit, plaintiff Stacy E. began to take Lipitor in 2003 and continued to take the drug through 2010. In 2005, Stacy was reportedly diagnosed with type-2 diabetes.

Diabetes is a lifelong condition and requires permanent changes in lifestyle, diet, and medical care. Her Lipitor lawsuit seeks to recoup the cost of medical care, compensation for pain and suffering, and other costs allegedly stemming from Lipitor diabetes.

Lipitor is a drug designed to help control blood cholesterol levels. Two major factors control blood cholesterol: the amount of cholesterol in a person’s diet, and the amount and types of cholesterol their body produces.

This is why that even with carefully controlled diet and exercise, some patients suffer from high blood cholesterol. Lipitor is designed to help decrease blood cholesterol levels. However, Lipitor diabetes lawsuits allege that the drug can make a person more likely  to develop type-2 diabetes.

Various research studies have shown that patients taking statins — the family of drugs to which Lipitor belongs — may increase the risk of developing type-2 diabetes. The first epidemiological studies to make this association found that statins increased the risk of type-2 diabetes.

However, follow-up studies found that Lipitor especially increased the risk of developing type-2 diabetes for post-menopausal women.

Stacey’s Lipitor lawsuit echoes claims made in thousands of other Lipitor lawsuits. So many Lipitor lawsuits have been filed that the legal system has resorted to a process called a multidistrict litigation, or MDL.

In MDLs, groups of similar suits are coordinated together, so that precedents set by earlier Lipitor lawsuits can be more easily applied to similar Lipitor lawsuits to streamline the legal system. Since Lipitor lawsuits make similar claims and typically hinge on similar evidence, they are ideal for inclusion in a single Lipitor MDL.

Thousands of Lipitor lawsuits are being organized through an MDL that is being handled at a South Carolina federal court.

The Lipitor Lawsuit is Case No. 0741, filed in the larger Lipitor MDL In re: Lipitor (Atorvastatin Calcium) Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation (No. II), MDL No. 2502, in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina.