mim0za

The documents show that Boehringer Ingelheim employees openly fretted when it appeared that the results of the research paper, written by Paul A. Reilly, a clinical program director at the company, indicated that some patients could benefit from monitoring of their blood. A certain segment of patients, the paper found, absorb too little of the drug to effectively prevent strokes, while another group absorbs so much that they are at a higher risk for bleeding.

In a draft version of the paper included in the court records, Dr. Reilly and his co-authors detailed specific levels of how much Pradaxa should be in a patient’s bloodstream, and said that keeping some patients within that range would help prevent strokes and bleeding.

As Dr. Reilly’s draft paper circulated within the company, some employees questioned what the marketing implications of such a conclusion would be.

One company supervisor, Dr. Jutta Heinrich-Nols, wrote in an email to other employees that she could not believe the company was planning to publish research that would negate a decade’s worth of work proving that patients taking Pradaxa would not need regular tests.

Publishing the research results, she warned, could make it “extremely difficult” for the company to defend its long-held position to regulators that Pradaxa did not require testing.

And, Dr. Heinrich-Nols added in the email, the research, if known, would “undermine” the company’s efforts to compete with other new anticoagulants, such as Xarelto and Eliquis.

I would like to ask you to check again whether this is really wanted,” she wrote about publishing the research.

The documents highlight how much information about drug safety is in the hands of people with a financial interest in the outcome, some drug industry observers said.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/business/study-of-blood-clot-drug-pradaxa-unnerved-its-maker-documents-suggest.html?ref=health