According to a recent news feature from the New York Times, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now conducting an investigation into whether a blood testing device used during clinical trials, which we now know to be defective, led to an approval of Xarelto that never should have happened.
Xarelto is a member of new class of drugs known as new oral anticoagulants (NOACs), which are being prescribed to treat patients with a serious medical condition known as atrial fibrillation. A person with this disease has an irregular heartbeat not caused by a valve defect that can cause large blood clots to form deep in a patient’s veins. The clots can break free in a condition known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and travel through the patient’s circulatory system, where they can rupture in the lungs in what is known as a pulmonary embolism (PE), or they can block the flow of blood to the brain causing a stroke. Continue reading