More than 1,300 Lipitor diabetes lawsuits are now part of ongoing collection of lawsuits alleging Lipitor causes diabetes.

The various Lipitor diabetes lawsuits state that Lipitor can cause type-2 diabetes, particularly in older women. Lipitor is a statin, a drug designed to correct high levels of LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol in the blood.

This is intended as a way to reduce the risk of heart attack and other complications from high cholesterol. However, Lipitor lawsuits against the drug’s manufacturer, Pfizer, allege that the drug can interfere with the processes the body uses to regulate blood sugar levels, leading to type-2 diabetes.

In type-2 diabetes, the patient loses the ability to control the amount of glucose (sugar) in their blood, causing it to build to toxic levels. There is no cure for type-2 diabetes, and the condition carries the risk of many complications, including kidney and heart disease, gangrene, and nerve damage.

Lipitor diabetes lawsuits began to pick up in 2012, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced mandatory label changes to reflect the possible risk of type-2 diabetes. The FDA’s actions came as a result of several studies, including research published by the American Medical Association’s JAMA Internal Medicine.

The study found that postmenopausal women who took Lipitor had an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes. This mirrored the results of earlier studies, which found a more general link between type-2 diabetes and statins. This study had a larger sample size than earlier research projects.

One accusation repeated in many of the Lipitor diabetes lawsuits is that Pfizer intentionally downplayed the risks allegedly linked to Lipitor. To support this allegation, many Lipitor lawsuits have cited the fact that when the FDA mandated changes to Lipitor’s labeling, Pfizer never actually used the word “diabetes.” Instead, the updated warning information included references to “elevated blood glucose levels,” which the Lipitor lawsuits characterize as medical jargon designed to obscure the risk of diabetes.

Since many similar Lipitor diabetes lawsuits have been filed against Pfizer, the court system has grouped them together in a type of coordinated legal action called a multidistrict litigation, or MDL. MDLs like the Lipitor MDL are designed to help streamline the legal process by combining tens, hundreds, or thousands of potential individual Lipitor lawsuits into a single coordinated legal action. This can save resources for all parties involved, by avoiding duplication of resources and distributing the costs of the lawsuits.

The Lipitor MDL is 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.