As­traZeneca re­searchers plumb pos­i­tive da­ta to back ex­tend­ed use of Bril­in­ta

Af­ter suf­fer­ing back-to-back clin­i­cal fail­ures last year that forced As­traZeneca to fi­nal­ly back off its pro­jec­tion of a bril­liant megablock­buster fu­ture for Bril­in­ta, the strug­gling phar­ma gi­ant has come up with a pos­i­tive batch of da­ta that could per­suade physi­cians to ex­tend its use among high-risk heart pa­tients.

Run­ning a sub-analy­sis of its 2015 PE­GA­SUS-TI­MI study, the re­searchers found a ma­jor 29% re­duc­tion in the risk of car­dio­vas­cu­lar death among high-risk pa­tients who con­tin­ued to take the clot-fight­ing drug past the first full year of ther­a­py. The pa­tient pop­u­la­tion had con­tin­ued tak­ing as­pirin and the drug group was com­pared with a place­bo plus as­pirin arm.

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