A new Xarelto blood thinner study shows patients on Xarelto face a higher risk of bleeding than those on other new anticoagulants.

Xarelto is one of a new group of anticoagulants, or blood-thinning drugs, developed within the last decade. As a group, these drugs all create an increased risk of bleeding injuries such as gastrointestinal bleeding and intracranial hemorrhage.

To compare the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding associated with Xarelto and two other new oral anticoagulants, researchers in the study examined data from claims filed with Medicare Advantage and private insurers.

The data reflected the experiences of over 47,000 anticoagulant patients. These patients took anticoagulant medications between October 2010 and February 2015 to reduce the risk of stroke associated with atrial fibrillation.

More than 31,000 of the patients in the Xarelto blood thinner study took Xarelto (referred to in the study by its generic name rivaroxaban).

Results of the Xarelto Blood Thinner Study

The Xarelto blood thinner study concluded that of the three anticoagulants, Xarelto had the least favorable gastrointestinal safety profile.

The researchers reported gastrointestinal bleeding occurred more frequently in Xarelto patients than in those who took dabigatran or apixaban. Patients who took Xarelto were most likely to suffer bleeding within 90 days of beginning treatment.

Generally, older patients faced a greater risk. The researchers reported the rates of bleeding for all three drugs increased for patients age 75 or older.

This Xarelto blood thinner study was published in December 2016 in the online journal Gastroenterology.

Litigation over Xarelto

The bleeding risk reflected in this Xarelto blood thinner study is the subject of a wave of products liability litigation against the drug’s manufacturer, Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

Plaintiffs have filed thousands of claims against Janssen and its parent company Johnson & Johnson, alleging they failed to sufficiently warn the medical community and the general public about the risk of bleeding injuries associated with Xarelto treatment.

Generally, the plaintiffs in these Xarelto lawsuits are patients who suffered dangerous bleeding episodes after taking Xarelto. Some are the close relatives of patients who died due to their bleeding injuries.

Plaintiffs also argue that Xarelto is a defective and dangerous product. In particular, they take issue with the fact that Xarelto was put on the market before an effective antidote was available.

To this day, there is still no antidote for Xarelto. Plaintiffs who suffer excessive Xarelto bleeding have no medication they can take to help get the bleeding under control.

Enough Xarelto lawsuits have been filed in the federal court system that the federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation combined them all into a single multidistrict litigation, or MDL. Combining similar cases in an MDL promotes more efficient pretrial processing and more consistent judicial decisions.

This Xarelto MDL is going on now in a federal court in New Orleans under the oversight of U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon. It now contains almost 15,000 individual Xarelto lawsuits, and even more claims are expected to be filed.

Claims filed elsewhere in the federal court system can be transferred into the MDL for expedited pretrial processing.