New Blood Clot Preventer from Japanese Maker Causes Less Bleeding

A Japanese brand Daiichi Sankyo has developed a blood clot preventer which doesn't just promise effectiveness but also less bleeding for sicker patients, Reuters reports.

The new product, dubbed as edoxaban, is comparable to warfarin-- a blood thinner known to slow down the blood clotting process but also known as a rat poison-- used to treat clotting within the veins called or a condition called venous thromboembolism. The selling point though is that the Japanese brand is offering less bleeding than other existing brands, based on their large clinical trial.

If the trials are accurate, it will earn the Japanese brand a competitive position against Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Blood clot preventers are believed to be capable of generating $10 billion sales per year.

Edoxaban needs to be taken just once a day. Doctors from the European Society of Cardiology congress present at the demonstration on Sunday could still not comment if it can really surpass the performance of existing oral anticoagulants.

"I'm uncertain as to the degree to which it moves the needle forward," said Dr. Patrick O'Gara of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, who is also president-elect of the American College of Cardiology, to Reuters.

Edoxaban was tested in 8,292 patients with a venous thromboembolism condition and was proven successful and produce a warfarin-like effect. Patients who had clinical bleeding was also reduced by 8.5 percent for edoxaban compared to 10.3 percent of warfarin.

They also compared the performance of the new drug to other brands such as Eliquis, or apixaban, from Pfizer and Bristol in which they found that it still caused lesser bleeding. However, doctors didn't consider it valid as the studies were very different.

Aside from assisting venous thromboembolism patients, the new drug was also tested on patients with conditions such as severe pulmonary embolism or clotting in the pulmonary artery and poor heart function. Edoxaban successfully reduced blood clotting by 48 percent on these patients.

The study was published in the online journal New England Journal of Medicine.

Daiichi is already selling edoxaban, marketed as Hokusai-VTE, in Japan since 2011 but plans to introduce it to the Western market by the first quarter of 2014.