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Sanofi's Lovenox cuts risk of repeat heart attacks

Posted on: Monday, 4 September 2006, 02:39 CDT

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Sanofi-Aventis SA's anti-thrombotic drug Lovenox reduces the risk of death or new heart attacks in patients undergoing artery clearance more effectively than an older -- but still widely used -- medicine.

Researchers told the World Congress of Cardiology on Monday that an injection of Lovenox, known also as enoxaparin, was significantly more effective than unfractionated heparin in patients undergoing angioplasty after suffering a heart attack.

Angioplasty is a non-surgical intervention in which a catheter is used to open narrowed arteries.

A new analysis of data from a large clinical trial found the risk of death or recurrent heart attack after 30 days for patients on Lovenox was 10.7 percent, against 13.8 percent for those on unfractionated heparin, Dr Michael Gibson of Harvard Medical School told the meeting.

"Based on these results, we believe that the enoxaparin strategy is now preferred to unfractionated heparin as an anti-coagulant regimen to use in ST elevation heart attack patients," he said.

The advantages of Lovenox over unfractionated heparin in the study, which was sponsored by Sanofi, were observed without any significant difference in bleeding rates. Dangerous levels of bleeding can be a problem with anti-coagulant treatments.

Source: REUTERS

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