Picture of Health: Drug to prevent strokes is successful in trials - Health care, wellness, food nutrition, exercise, medical research news from reporters who know the halls of the world's top hospital

The Baltimore Sun > Life > Health & Wellness > Picture of Health

« 'Morning types' do better in the Major Leagues | Main | Drinking coffee may help prevent diabetes »

June 11, 2010

Drug to prevent strokes is successful in trials

Two of the company's biggeset drug companies are closer to commercializing a drug that would reduce the risk of stroke for people with irregular heartbeats by preventing blood clots.

Pfizer Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said they had stopped a joint clinical trial on the drug, named apixaban, because there was enough evidence to prove it worked.

The drug companies have been testing the drug on 5,600 patients in 36 countries since September. The study was coordinated by the Population Health Research Institute.

About 2.3 million people in the United States suffer from irregular heartbeats, according to the companies. Nearly 2 million people develop blood clots in large veins of the body that can break free and lodge in the lungs, potentially resulting in death.

Current drugs to prevent blood clots don't work on all patients with the heart condition.

Posted by Andrea Walker at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Comments

Just what we need, yet another drug to prevent drug clots. Only how much will this one cost ??

Posted by: karen | June 19, 2010 11:09 AM

Post a comment

All comments must be approved by the blog author. Please do not resubmit comments if they do not immediately appear. You are not required to use your full name when posting, but you should use a real e-mail address. Comments may be republished in print, but we will not publish your e-mail address. Our full Terms of Service are available here.

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments:

Verification (needed to reduce spam):

About Picture of Health

Meredith Cohn has been a reporter since 1991, covering everything from politics and airlines to the environment and medicine. A runner since junior high and a particular eater for almost as long, she tries to keep up on health and fitness trends. Her aim is to bring you the latest news and information from the local and national medical and wellness communities.

Andrea K. Walker knows it’s weird to some people, but she has a fascination with fitness, diseases, medicine and other health-related topics. She subscribes to a variety of health and fitness magazines and becomes easily engrossed in the latest research in health and science. An exercise fanatic, she’s probably tried just about every fitness activity there is. Her favorites are running, yoga and kickboxing. So it is probably fitting that she has been assigned to cover the business of healthcare and to become a regular contributor to this blog. Andrea has been at The Sun for nearly 10 years, covering manufacturing, retail , airlines and small and minority business. She looks forward to telling readers about the latest health news.

Follow @BaltSunHealth