A woman has filed a Xarelto lawsuit against the drug’s manufacturers, alleging that she suffered severe adverse effects and complications including internal bleeding after she took the anticoagulant medication.

Plaintiff Mary H. files the lawsuit in Louisiana federal court and joins a multidistrict litigation currently in progress against Janssen Research & Development LLC. and its parent company Johnson & Johnson.

According to the Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuit, Mary maintains that Xarelto is “defective, dangerous to human health, unfit and unsuitable to be marketed and sold in commerce, and lacked proper warnings and directions as to the dangers associated with its use.”

The Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuit further maintains that Mary, a resident of New Mexico, was prescribed Xarelto in August 2014 for the treatment of DVT, or deep vein thrombosis. DVT is the condition where a blood clot forms in a deep vein, usually in the body’s lower extremity.

However, soon after, she was admitted into Ladera Care & Rehab Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she was diagnosed with anemia. Subsequently after, she was admitted to Lovelace Medical Center where was diagnosed as “having suffered from lower gastrointestinal bleeding.”

Xarelto Internal Bleeding Lawsuit Facts

Xarelto is a new prescription medication–part of a new generation of an oral anticoagulant drugs that is prescribed to patients who suffer from the risks of developing blood clots. However, while there are some benefits to the use of the medication, many other patients have suffered extreme adverse side effects and complications.

Xarelto is specifically prescribed to prevent patients who have atrial fibrillation, also known as an abnormal heart rhythm, from developing strokes and heart attacks. It is used to prevent the formation of blood clots in the body’s lower extremities (deep vein thrombosis, or DVT) and from developing a pulmonary embolism, a condition where one or more arteries in the lungs become blocked by a blood clot.

It may also be prescribed to patients who are undergoing surgeries such as knee or hip replacement.

According to the Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuit, Xarelto was required to conduct studies and order to obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. However, it’s alleged in the Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuit that these studies were in fact faulty and flawed, and were not accurate and properly reported.

A study, termed the ROCKET Study, had purportedly found that Xarelto was not a superior drug to its competition drug, warfarin, and that it had a similar adverse effects and complication in causing internal bleeding.

According to this study, “bleeding from gastrointestinal sites, including upper, lower, and rectal sites, occurred more frequently in the rivaroxaban group, as did bleeding that led to a drop in the hemoglobin level of bleeding that required transfusion,” the Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuit contends.

Mary’s Xarelto Internal Bleeding Lawsuit is Case No. 2:17-cv-08122-EEF-MBN and is part of the Xarelto MDL, In re: Xarelto (Rivaroxaban) Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2592, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.