A woman from Connecticut has filed a Yaz lawsuit after she was hospitalized for eight days because of a Yasmin-related diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis.
Kathleen Benanti began taking Yasmin in 2004. She switched to Yaz in 2007. By February 6, 2010, Benanti stopped taking the pills when she was brought to a hospital for an eight-day stay after she was found to be suffering from injuries that were caused by a massive bilateral pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis. Both of those conditions have been proven to be side effects of the drospirenone-based birth control pills.
Benanti decided to file her lawsuit on January 25, 2012, in the United States District Court (New York Southern). The suit is alleging the same thing that many other Yaz lawsuits claims — that Bayer, the makers of Yaz and Yasmin, “intentionally underplayed serious Yaz side effects by excluding side effects information from marketing and promotional materials.”
Bayer has been accused of keeping the side effects linked to the drugs quiet for quite some time now. Some of the side effects proven to be linked to the pills include heart attacks, strokes, gallbladder disease and blood clots that can lead to pulmonary embolisms and deep vein thrombosis. Many of these side effects have been the subject of articles posted in various medical journals, including the British Medical Journal.
Benanti’s case is just one of the thousands that have been filed against Bayer, but the drug company continues to stand behind its pills by claiming that they are no more dangerous than other birth control pills that don’t contain drospirenone. Clearly with the number of lawsuits against the company, combined with the blizzard of evidential studies backing up plaintiff injury claims, Bayer’s defense is quickly running out of steam. In the end, only verdicts will really decide who’s correct.
