A federal jury has cleared Bayer AG and Johnson & Johnson of liability in the third case to go to trial out of thousands of lawsuits claiming the drugmakers’ blood thinner Xarelto led to severe internal bleeding.

The verdict in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Mississippi, is a blow to thousands of patients with similar allegations against the drugmaker. The jury returned the verdict after just four hours of deliberation.

The companies also won the previous two trials on claims of risks from Xarelto.

In the latest case, plaintiff Dora Mingo claimed she suffered acute gastrointestinal bleeding after she was treated with Xarelto for a month in 2015 to prevent blood clotting following an operation.

She accused the drugmakers, who jointly developed the blood thinner, of having failed to warn about the bleeding risks and said her injuries could have been prevented had they provided adequate information.

As the number of lawsuits against the blood thinner Xarelto continues to climb, so do reports of injuries and deaths caused by the controversial anticoagulant, according to a recent study by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP).

According to ISMP, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration received 15,043 reports of serious injury or death linked to Xarelto last year — a 41 percent increase over the previous year.

ISMP, a non-profit organization that monitors and analyzes adverse drug events reported to the government, published the findings in its annual edition of QuarterWatch. 

Oral blood thinners such as Xarelto caused more emergency room visits in 2016 than any other class of drugs, ISMP found. The group said it identified nearly 22,000 reports of severe injury, including 3,018 deaths. Nearly all of the injuries were from internal bleeding, the report states. Of the five anticoagulants implicated, rivaroxaban, sold under the brand name Xarelto, accounted for 68.4 percent of all adverse events in 2016, according to ISMP.

A month after drugmakers Johnson & Johnson and Bayer prevailed in the first trial over allegations of harm caused by the blood thinner Xarelto, the second bellwether case has gone to trial in New Orleans.

This time, the family of a woman who died about a year after she started taking the drug for atrial fibrillation is accusing the drugmakers of responsibility for her fatal hemorrhagic stroke.

Sharyn Orr, of Louisiana, died in May 2015 at the age of 67 after being in a coma for 10 days.

The family’s lawyers say her death was “completely avoidable.”

The first federal trial over the bleeding risks of Xarelto, Johnson & Johnson and Bayer’s blockbuster anticoagulant, kicks off next week, with 18,000 more cases stacked up behind it. It will be the initial indicator of whether juries are likely to side with the drugmakers, ruling that their med is safe and effective, or patients, who claim the two companies hid the real risks of the blood thinner.

The case in New Orleans was brought by Joseph Boudreaux, who took the drug to cut his stroke risk but claims it caused internal bleeding that caused heart problems and resulted in a visit to intensive care unit for a week, the Chicago Tribune reported.

In their defense, J&J and Bayer point out that the FDA has deemed the drug safe and effective and that the risks it holds are clearly laid out on its label.

Joseph Boudreaux says taking Johnson & Johnson’s blood-thinning drug Xarelto was one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

While Xarelto was supposed to help cut his stroke risk, Boudreaux says it instead caused internal bleeding that required a week-long hospital stay in the intensive-care unit, several blood transfusions and multiple heart procedures. “I don’t want anybody else to suffer like I have from that drug,” the part-time security guard says.

Starting Monday, Boudreaux will get a chance to have jurors hold J&J and Bayer, which jointly developed Xarelto, responsible for the treatment’s potentially fatal side effects as his case in New Orleans becomes the first lawsuit targeting the medicine to go to trial.

The companies are facing more than 18,000 U.S. patient suits blaming the blood thinner for internal bleeding. The medicine also has been linked to at least 370 deaths, according to Food and Drug Administration reports.