Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer's Inc. new anticoagulant drug apixaban is no safer or more effective than standard treatment in reducing the risk of potentially lethal blood clots, a study says.
According to Bloomberg News, researchers presented findings Sunday at the American Heart Association meeting in Orlando, Fla., showing that clots occurred in 2.7 percent of patients using apixaban, known popularly as Eliquis, as compared to 3.1 percent of those given Lovenox — the enoxaparin-based anticoagulant commonly prescribed to patients recovering from surgical procedures. The difference, researchers say, is not statistically significant. Additionally, patients using apixaban experienced higher rates — 7.8 percent, as compared to Lovenox's 6.8 percent — of dangerous bleeding.
Said lead researcher Dr. Samuel Goldhaber, director of the venous thromboembolism research group at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School, “We’ve made great headway in preventing deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism in surgical patients and hospitalized medical patients.”
“Where we have failed to make progress is the after-hospital discharge medical patient.”
Apixaban is the second of two recently introduced anticoagulants to fail to show significant improvement over traditional treatment. Found similarly ineffective was Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG’s Xarelto, which underwent clinical trials in April.
According to Goldhaber, 8 million Americans are at moderate to high risk of venuous thromoboembolism. About 1 million develop clot symptoms in the months following hospital release.
