A patient has filed a lawsuit against Bayer Pharmaceuticals and McKesson Corporation over an adverse gadolinium reaction she says she suffered after Magnevist was used as a contrast agent in her MRI. The patient alleges the drug is defective and can cause patients to be injured by gadolinium, a heavy metal in the drug.

The patient is a resident of Daly City, Calif., and claims that she was administered a drug called Magnevist, which is sold by McKesson Corporation of San Fransisco, and manufactured and sold by Bayer Pharmaceuticals. She says that this drug is a gadolinium-based contrast agent used to make patients’ organs appear more visibly in MRI imaging.

The patients says that she was injected with Magnevist before several MRIs. Sh says that before the injection, she had normal kidney function. But after the injection, she says she developed a range of adverse symptoms and a gadolinium reaction, including kidney damage.

Allegedly, she also developed burning sensations, violent shaking and tremors, aching joints, muscle cramps, numbness, clouded mental activity, confusion, weakness, fatigue, hypoglycemia, low body temperature, weight loss, weight loss, pain and difficulty moving, inflammation, especially in lymph nodes, osteoporosis, and lumps and rashes on the her body.

She says that on the whole, she developed Gadolinium Deposition Disease (GDD), which describes the variety of symptoms she experienced after being injected with Magnevist. Allegedly, GDD occurs because gadolinium, the metal that is the active ingredient in Magnevist and is what allows organs to more easily be seen in MRI imaging, is toxic.

GDD allegedly occurs in patients who had normal kidney function before they were injected with a gadolinium contrast agent. The Magnevist gadolinium reaction lawsuit says there is no known cure to GDD.

Allegedly, gadolinium has widely been believed to be harmless because the body was believed to flush it out after a few hours, but research now suggests that the metal can remain in the body for years, and is toxic and harmful.

The Magnevist lawsuit says that gadolinium is a heavy metal that does not naturally occur in the body, and the only known way a patient can get gadolinium in their body is when it is injected in the form of a gadolinium-based contrast agent.

The patient says that to prevent gadolinium from coming into contact with human tissue and being toxic when put into the human body, it is coated with another substance. Allegedly, in the case of Magnevist, the other substance does not sufficiently surround the gadolinium ions, making it possible for the metal to enter human tissue.

She alleges the method of coating gadolinium in another substance used in Magnevist is well-documented as being less effective than the method used in other gadolinium contrast agents.

The patient claims that Bayer and McKesson knew or should have known that the drug was dangerous, but did not warn patients or the medical community that the drug could cause an adverse gadolinium reaction.

The Magnevist Gadolinium Reaction Lawsuit is Case No. CGC-18-567073, in the U.S. Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco.