Preliminary results from a German study suggest that stroke patients' use of anti-anemia drugs such as Aranesp, Procrit and Epogen might end up boosting their risk for death, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned on Friday.
The goal of the study was to see if high doses of the anti-anemia drug epoetin alfa could improve the ability of stroke patients to take care of themselves after recovering from a stroke.
The hope was that the drug would be neuroprotective, but use of epoetin alfa now appears linked to a near-doubling of mortality.
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1 comment:
Back in 2002, I was working on a piece for OBI about the effects of anemia on cognitive function, and there were a few shreds of tantalizing research that suggested EPO might help with recovery from strokes, or avoiding chemo 'fog'. Of _course_ we wanted more data to find out whether this was worthy of a label amendment or brand extention!
The problem, of course, is that Reality doesn't always concur with the dreams of marketing plans...
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