So right there the balance favors anticoagulation,” Milling told Reuters Health in a telephone interview. “However, if you didn’t give them the anticoagulant, double that number would stroke. Perhaps 1 percent to 2 percent of them will spontaneously start to bleed somewhere in the body as a side effect of their anti-factor Xa medicine. Such drugs are used by people with conditions such as atrial fibrillation, which increases the risk of stroke.

Truman Milling Jr., an emergency medicine specialist with the Ascension Seton Dell Medical School Stroke Institute in Austin, Texas. “There’s a big need for a reversal agents for these drugs” that are being taken by about 2.6 million people, said coauthor Dr.

The drug reversed episodes of major bleeding that couldn’t be stopped because the patients were on drugs such as apixaban and rivaroxaban, which inhibit the body’s natural blood clotting chemical known as factor Xa. The new test, reported on Tuesday at a European Society of Cardiology Congress in Rome and released by the New England Journal of Medicine, offers more evidence.

Food and Drug Administration decided not to approve this so-called reversal agent without more data. The drug is Portola Pharmaceuticals’ AndexXa, known generically as andexanet alfa. (Reuters Health) - An experimental drug designed to quickly counteract blood-thinning medicines has demonstrated effectiveness, according to preliminary results of a new trial done under real-world conditions.

Andexxa trial