Results of Canadian Trasylol Study Released
Patients who were given the anti-bleeding drug Trasylol, known generically as aprotinin, had a 53 percent higher death rate than patients who were given comparable drugs.
That’s the conclusion reached in the long-awaited Canadian study on Trasylol, known generically as aprotinin, announced today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In an editorial that accompanied the BART study, Dr. Wayne Ray and Dr. Michael Stein of Vanderbilt University wrote:
“Thus, in all likelihood, this is the end of the aprotinin story.”
Trasylol is made by Bayer. On Jan. 20, 2006, an article suggesting a link between Trasylol and renal toxicity was published in the medical journal Transfusion. Later that same month, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article, co-authored by Dr. Dennis Mangano of the nonprofit Ischemia Research and Education Foundation, linking Trasylol to a higher risk of stroke, heart attack and kidney failure.
In the fall of 2006, an FDA advisory board met to decide whether the warning on Trasylol needed to be changed. At the meeting, Bayer failed to disclose the findings of a Trasylol study it had funded. In that study, Dr. Alexander Walker—a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health—reviewed the hospital records of 67,000 patients and found that those given Trasylol had a risk of death 64 percent higher than that of patients who received a comparison drug. It wasn’t until November 2007 that the drug was finally pulled from the market.
The BART study is significant because it was designed as a side-by-side comparison of aprotinin with two other drugs, tranexamic acid sold under the brand name Cyklokapron and aminocaproic acid, sold under the brand name Amicar.
Not only are the comparison drugs safer, they’re much cheaper. According to an article in Reuters, a Trasylol treatment costs between $1,200 and $1,500. The other two drugs cost about $150.
Our firm currently represents several Trasylol victims and their families in lawsuits against Bayer. If you or a loved one suffered complications after taking Trasylol contact Carey & Danis. We can help. Carey & Danis is a national law firm that represents individuals injured by America's largest corporations.
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