Prasugrel for Japanese Patients With Ischemic Heart Disease in Long-Term Clinical Practice (PRASFIT-Practice II)　- A 3-Month Interim Analysis of a Postmarketing Observational Study.

BACKGROUND: A unique dose of prasugrel has been approved exclusively for Japanese patients, but real-world data for prasugrel at that dose in patients with ischemic heart disease (IHD) are limited. Therefore, large-scale, real-world data are needed. Methods and Results: A 2-year observational study of Japanese patients with IHD undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention and being treated with prasugrel to evaluate safety and effectiveness. This report is an interim analysis of data from case report forms (CRFs) after 3 months. CRFs were collected from 4,270 patients, 4,157 of whom were eligible for the safety and effectiveness analysis sets (mean age, 68.3 years; male, 76.5%). The median treatment period was 112 days, and 92.3% of patients continued treatment with prasugrel. The incidence of non-coronary artery bypass grafting-related bleeding adverse events (AEs) was 3.1%, of which Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) major and minor bleeding accounted for 0.5% and 0.6%, respectively. The most common bleeding AEs were gastrointestinal disorders, which accounted for 43.2% of the sum of "TIMI major and minor bleeding AEs". The incidence of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) was 1.0%, and the cumulative incidence of MACE was 1.4%. The incidence of stent thrombosis was 0.2%. CONCLUSIONS: Interim study results indicated that prasugrel was safe and effective during the early phase of treatment in Japanese patients with IHD in real-world clinical settings.

Bleeding risks associated with anticoagulant therapies after percutaneous coronary intervention in Japanese patients with ischemic heart disease complicated by atrial fibrillation: A comparative study.

BACKGROUND: Current guidelines recommend early termination of triple therapy and the use of direct oral anticoagulants (DOAC) for non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) patients who undergo percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), due to safety concerns. However, to date, real-world medication usage and safety outcomes (specifically bleeding) in NVAF patients with stent implantation have not been well assessed. METHODS: This was a retrospective, observational, medical database cohort study in Japanese ischemic heart disease (IHD) patients with NVAF who underwent PCI between 2012 and 2017. The primary outcome was clinically relevant bleeding; secondary outcomes included individual bleeding events. A multivariate analysis was conducted to identify risk factors affecting the occurrence of clinically relevant bleeding events. RESULTS: The analysis population comprised 5695 patients [3530 received DOACs and 2165 received vitamin K antagonists (VKAs)]. The incidence of primary outcome events (clinically relevant bleeding/100 patient-years) was 6.05 in the DOAC group and 8.42 in the VKA group, resulting in a nonsignificant 21% lower risk in the DOAC group. The DOAC group also had a nonsignificant 24%, 24%, and 34% lower risk of bleeding requiring transfusion, intracranial bleeding, and lower gastrointestinal bleeding, respectively, compared with the VKA group. A multivariate analysis of the primary outcome showed a significantly higher risk of bleeding among older patients and those with lower body weight and abnormal renal function. CONCLUSIONS: In this retrospective real-world evaluation of IHD patients with NVAF and PCI, DOAC-treated patients had a lower risk of developing clinically relevant bleeding compared with the VKA group.

Postmarketing surveillance on clinical use of edoxaban in patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (ETNA-AF-Japan): Three-month interim analysis results.

BACKGROUND: Direct oral anticoagulants are the first-line drugs for anticoagulation therapy in nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). However, a real-world, large-scale, clinical study on edoxaban has not been performed. Our ongoing postmarketing surveillance, ETNA-AF-Japan (Edoxaban Treatment in routiNe clinical prActice in patients with non-valvular Atrial Fibrillation; UMIN000017011), was designed to collect such data. METHODS: Enrollment started on 13 April 2015 and ended on 30 September 2017. Eligible patients were those diagnosed with NVAF who were to receive edoxaban for the first time and provided written consent for study participation. Baseline patient characteristics and adverse events (AEs) were collected. RESULTS: A total of 11 569 patients were enrolled. Data for 8157 patients in the first 3 months were analyzed. Mean age, body weight, creatinine clearance (CLcr), and CHADS 2 score were 74.2 ± 10.0 years, 60.0 ± 12.6 kg, 64.0 ± 25.6 mL/min, and 2.2 ± 1.3, respectively. Female patients, and patients with age ≥75 years, body weight ≤60 kg, and CLcr <30 mL/min constituted 40.7%, 52.4%, 54.6%, and 4.7%, respectively. Patients with paroxysmal, persistent, and permanent AF constituted 46.1%, 38.7%, and 15.1%, respectively. Most patients (85.3%) received dosages according to the prescribing information, and 90.8% continued the medication for 3 months. Bleeding AEs occurred in 3.29%, including major bleeding in 0.29%. CONCLUSIONS: The majority (90.8%) of patients continued medication and no significant safety concerns related to edoxaban were reported during the first 3 months of treatment. Clearer safety and efficacy profiles of edoxaban await data analyses after the 2-year follow-up period.

Utilization of the Bridging Strategy for the Development of New Drugs in Oncology to Avoid Drug Lag.

Global trial (GT) strategy and bridging (BG) strategy are currently the main clinical development strategies of oncology drugs in Japan, but the relationship between development style and drug lag and how the bridging strategy has contributed to the solution of drug lag have not been clear. We investigated the potential factors that influenced submission lag (SL), and also compared the differences in SL among early-initiation BG strategy, late-initiation BG strategy, and GT strategy. A stepwise linear regression analysis identified the potential factors that shorten SL: development start lag and development style. Comparison of the differences in SL among the strategies also indicated that the SL in the GT strategy and that in the early-initiation BG strategy were significantly shorter than that in the late-initiation BG strategy. The findings in our study suggest that the late-initiation BG strategy may not contribute to shortening drug lag. Because the number of late-initiation BG studies has not decreased, we propose first that pharmaceutical companies should initiate clinical development as early as possible in Japan so that they can choose the GT strategy as a first option at the next step, and second when they cannot choose the GT strategy after investigating differences in exposure between Japanese and non-Japanese in a phase 1 study, they should select the early BG strategy to avoid future drug lag. It is also important for the regulatory authorities to provide reasonable guidance to have a positive impact on strategic decisions, even for foreign-capital companies.