The lawsuits of families claiming the anti-nausea drug Zofran caused birth defects in their children are now consolidated to a single court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The transfer order issued by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation found sufficient evidence that 12 cases involved similar facts and a similar defendant – drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline. In order to increase efficiency and decrease costs, the cases were consolidated in a process called multidistrict litigation (MDL).

An estimated 1 million women take Zofran (ondansetron) every year to treat nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (NVP), but the U.S.