If you’ve suffered from an iron deficiency, you’ve likely experienced symptoms like fatigue, dizziness, lightheadedness, fast heart rate or palpitations, shortness of breath, and even brittle nails. While several treatments are used for anemia, one of the most common since 2013 has been Injectafer. If you’ve been prescribed that medication and have experienced a condition called hypophosphatemia, you may be able to pursue a lawsuit with the personal injury lawyers from Thomas Law Offices.
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What Is Injectafer?
Hemoglobin is the part of the red blood cells responsible for transporting oxygen through the body to organs and cells. The iron in the body helps with that process. If the body is not producing enough hemoglobin, the organ and cells in the body are not getting enough oxygen. This is why having sufficient iron in your bloodstream is crucial.
Injectafer is used to treat iron deficiency anemia in adults who are unable to take iron supplements. It’s also prescribed to patients who have been diagnosed with kidney disease but are not on dialysis. The medication is an injectable iron complex, manufactured by American Regent, Inc., a subsidiary of Luitpold Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Approved and released into the U.S. Consumer market in 2013, Injectafer works by slowly releasing iron directly into the bloodstream to reduce the side effects and symptoms of anemia. Patients who are prescribed the medication are typically given two administrations within a matter of at least seven days.
Injectafer and the Increased Risk of Hypophosphatemia
To understand what hypophosphatemia is, you first have to have a general understanding of why low levels of phosphate are dangerous to the human body. People naturally absorb phosphate in foods like milk, eggs, meat, and beans. When phosphorus combines with oxygen, the body produces phosphate, which supports essential structures like bones, teeth, muscles, and nerves.
When phosphate levels begin to drop, hypophosphatemia can develop, and the body won’t function normally. This means that the bones, teeth, muscles, and nerves the phosphate kept healthy are no longer receiving what they need.
Side effects of hypophosphatemia include:
- Muscle pain
- Bone pain and fractures
- Respiratory failure
- Seizures
- Heart failure
- Acute hemolytic anemia
- Confusion and delirium
- Coma
- Death
In 2015, the International Journal of Rheumatology released a study that concluded over 50 percent of patients injected with ferric carboxymaltose, which is present in Injectafer, developed hypophosphatemia. In 2016, researchers in Austria came to a similar conclusion.
What to Do If You Take Injectafer
If you’ve been prescribed and injected with Injectafer and believe you are having an adverse reaction, seek medical attention promptly. Hypophosphatemia is a severe medical condition that has the potential to be fatal, so it’s important to get looked at right away. However, it’s important to remember that you should not discontinue medications prescribed to you without seeking an opinion from your doctor first.
If you are diagnosed with hypophosphatemia, it’s time to get in touch with a lawyer to learn about your legal options. Filing a lawsuit against the manufacturer might be in your best interests. The process can seem daunting, but it may be the only way to manage your condition and move forward with the knowledge that your future and the future of your family is secure.
Filing an Injectafer Lawsuit
Anyone who took Injectafer as prescribed and suffered harm from hypophosphatemia may be eligible for a lawsuit against the drug’s manufacturer. American Regent has failed to investigate or provide adequate warnings about the risk of developing hypophosphatemia from Injectafer injections. As a result, patients are developing side effects they were not expecting. While the Injectafer prescribing information mentions hypophosphatemia under “Adverse Reactions,” it does not describe the condition as being severe or extreme—as studies have found it to be.
If you’ve been diagnosed with hypophosphatemia after being prescribed Injectafer, you may be able to pursue a legal claim against the manufacturer. By doing so, you could be eligible to recover compensatory damages for past, current, and future medical bills, lost wages, missed opportunities or career setbacks, physical pain, mental anguish, and more.
In addition to those forms of compensation, it’s essential to know that lawsuits like this in the past have sometimes resulted in punitive damages being awarded in an attempt to punish the negligent companies for especially problematic conduct.
To improve the chances of receiving full and fair compensation, your attorney will conduct a thorough investigation of your medical history, in conjunction with guidance from medical experts to determine what you’re owed and the best way to go about pursuing your claim. Because the failure to warn has impacted so many people, Injectafer lawsuits will likely become a class action or be consolidated into multidistrict litigation.
Anatomy of a Mass Tort
A mass tort helps courts manage cases that affect multiple people more efficiently. For a lawsuit to become a mass tort, a large group of plaintiffs have to have been allegedly harmed, the defendant has to be the same among the victims, and the lawsuit has to be consolidated into one action, as opposed to separate individual lawsuits.
With a mass tort, the number of people injured is often smaller than with a class action, and even though those plaintiffs are part of a larger group, they are treated as individuals. This means that each plaintiff needs to be able to establish certain facts, including anything individual to that particular plaintiff and how that person has been injured by the defendant’s actions.
In regard to Injectafer, a mass tort has already been started. Plaintiffs have experienced a spectrum of injuries, including hypophosphatemia, severe hypophosphatemia, osteomalacia, bones fracture, and more.
Contact Thomas Law Offices
Discovering you’ve been taking a dangerous or defective medication can be scary. At Thomas Law Offices, our dangerous drug lawyers understand that fear and the other consequences of taking a drug with detrimental or deadly side effects. That’s why we’re prepared to take on clients who have been diagnosed with hypophosphatemia after taking Injectafer.
The sooner you get in touch with us regarding your potential claim, the better your chances are of maximizing your settlement offer or verdict. Contact us today to learn more about your legal rights and options or about how the mass tort process works.
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