Pradaxa May Need Blood Testing, Company Researcher Admits

The new blood thinner Pradaxa was supposed to be safer than warfarin and not require blood testing. But it may not be as straightforward to dose as we have been told. Some older patients metabolize it differently, and now internal company documents have been made public by the courts according to The New York Times:

The makers of the blood-thinning drug Pradaxa were so worried that an internal research paper would damage drug sales that some employees not only pressured the author to revise it, but suggested it should be quashed altogether, according to newly unsealed legal documents.
The documents were made public last week by a federal judge in Illinois who is overseeing thousands of lawsuits filed by patients and their families, who say that Pradaxa’s manufacturer, the German company Boehringer Ingelheim, failed to properly warn them about the risks of taking the drug.
Since its approval in 2010, the drug, which can cause fatal bleeding, has brought in more than $2 billion in sales in the United States, according to the research firm IMS Health.
It has been prescribed to 850,000 patients, but has also been linked to more than 1,000 deaths.

http://nyti.ms/LQYwW3