The number of Lipitor lawsuits over alleged diabetes side effects continues to rise.

Lipitor is a type of drug designed to decrease the amount of bad cholesterol in a person’s blood. Humans do need small amounts of cholesterol, even LDL or “bad” cholesterol to survive. However, excessive levels of LDL cholesterol in the blood can promote heart and blood vessel disease.

Drugs like Lipitor and other statins are designed to help lower the levels of LDL cholesterol in the body and decrease the risk of heart disease and other possible side effects of high cholesterol. However, Lipitor lawsuits allege that the drug may have serious Lipitor side effects that could be dangerous in their own right.

Various studies and postmarket data has indicated that postmenopausal women who take Lipitor may have an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes. Studies have found similar results for all statins, the family of drugs that includes Lipitor.

Various Lipitor lawsuits allege that the makers of Lipitor knew — or reasonably should have known — about the risk of developing type-2 diabetes from Lipitor.

The number of Lipitor diabetes lawsuits continue to climb. As of Jan. 15, 2015, at least 1,604 Lipitor lawsuits have been consolidated in a South Carolina federal court. This came after a recent surge of more than 100 Lipitor lawsuits were added to the coordinated legal action over the drug.

So many Lipitor lawsuits have been filed over alleged cases of Lipitor diabetes that the legal system has had to resort to a multidistrict litigation, or MDL, to coordinate them together.

Multidistrict litigation is a type of legal action where the court system coordinates similar lawsuits together, treating the individual Lipitor lawsuits almost like a large Lipitor class action lawsuit.

The main difference is that in an MDL, individual cases have a greater degree of autonomy and remain separate Lipitor lawsuits. But through an MDL, evidence often has to be presented only once, as precedent in one Lipitor lawsuit will often apply to the rest of the Lipitor lawsuits.

The Lipitor lawsuits are ideal for inclusion in a single Lipitor MDL, as they make similar allegations and hinge on similar evidence.

For example, all of the Lipitor lawsuits in the Lipitor MDL allege that the makers of Lipitor were aware of the risk of Lipitor diabetes and not only failed to warn the public, but actively downplayed the risks associated with the drug, causing millions to use it despite the risk. Evidence presented in bellwether trials to make this point will be applicable in the others.

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.