Replies to post #169183 on Biotech Values

[genisi]

I don't think there's a practical way of monitoring but perhaps you can identify those who are at a greater risk.

[tony111]

You cannot. You can probably do a CT angiogram to look for narrowing of the blood vessels. Its pretty obvious that the cause of thrombotic event is likely due to accelerated atherosclerosis.

[biotech_researcher]

biowatch, i'm not sure lethal is the right measurement point. I'm thinking vision, limb, or organ degradation would be better.

[biomaven0]

The standard test for PAOD is the ankle brachial index - basically the ratio of the systolic blood pressure in the ankles to that in the arms. Anything below 0.9 indicates a problem, with a reading below 0.5 indicating a serious problem. That was the test used in the recent paper discussing PAOD in Tasigna patients - they found 28% of 2nd-line Tasigna patients had an index below 0.9

It's a pretty simple test - takes a nurse under 10 minutes.

The FDA's concern here is that some patients have had incidents very shortly after going on the drug, and so such testing might not help. I'd be interested to know if those patients were previously on Tasigna.

Peter