A woman has filed a claim against the manufacturers of Xarelto on behalf of her late husband, alleging that he suffered life-threatening bleeding from taking the anti-coagulant medication and subsequently died.

Plaintiff Patricia F. filed her Xarelto injuries lawsuit in Louisiana federal court as part of the multidistrict litigation currently in progress against Johnson & Johnson and Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals.

Patricia files the Xarelto injuries lawsuit on behalf of Anson F. According to the Xarelto injuries lawsuit, Anson began taking Xarelto in June 2015. While taking the medication, however, he suffered from “a large left temporal lobe intracerebral hematoma and death as a direct result of Xarelto.”

The Xarelto injuries lawsuit further maintains that Anson was admitted to Alvarado Hospital, located in San Diego, Calif. There, he was hospitalized for 13 days, in which he was also admitted into the intensive care unit for monitoring of his Xarelto treatment and other adverse effects and complications related to taking the medication.

Allegedly, because of Xarelto, Anson was incubated and put on life support. He later died on Oct. 5, 2015.

Xarelto Injuries Facts

According to the Xarelto injuries lawsuit, Xarelto is a new generation of anticoagulant medication that is taken for the treatment of blood clots, and for patients who suffer risks of developing blood clots for any number of reasons.

However, although it may reportedly be useful for some patients, other patients, like Anson, have suffered severe adverse effects and complications.

Xarelto is taking as an anticoagulant to prevent heart attacks and strokes in patients with a condition known as atrial fibrillation, a condition that features an abnormal heart rhythm. The drug is taken to prevent a pulmonary embolism, the condition in which one or more arteries in the lungs become blocked by a blood clot, and deep vein thrombosis, the condition in which a blood clot forms in the body’s lower extremities, such as the legs.

In order to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Xarelto injuries lawsuit purports, the defendants had to conduct several trials to prove the drug’s efficacy and safety.

However, reports maintain that they trials were in fact flawed in nature and did not accurately reflect the information that was later presented to patients, the public, and medical community at large.

For example, one such study is the ROCKET AF study. Although the study had concluded that Xarelto was not inferior to its competitor and warfarin, a drug that was already being sold on the market, but that “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.”

In a second set of studies, according to the Xarelto injuries lawsuit, known as the RECORD studies, they showed that Xarelto was superior to another anticoagulant medication. However, patients were found to have greater incidences of bleeding, which then instigated lower levels of hemoglobin which is needed for blood transfusions.

Ansons’s Xarelto Injuries lawsuit is Case No. 2:17-cv-08510-EEF-MBN, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The Xarelto MDL is In re: Xarelto (Rivaroxaban) Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2592, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.