The irony here is that Eli Lilly has advanced sepsis care (as a prelude to using their drug), and while Xigris hasn’t panned out, aggressive sepsis resuscitation has.
Eli Lilly is withdrawing drotrecogin alfa (Xigris) from all markets worldwide after a major study failed to show a survival benefit for patients taking the drug.
…
Xigris should be discontinued immediately in patients currently receiving it and should not be started in new patients, the company said.
The trial with the bad news on Xigris was called PROWESS-SHOCK, a placebo-controlled study with 28-day mortality as the primary outcome and planned enrollment of nearly 1,700 patients.
via Medical News: Sepsis Drug Pulled from Market – in Product Alert, Prescriptions from MedPage Today.
At ACEP the reviewers of this study said it favored placebo over Xigris. Tough to market a very very expensive drug when not using it is better…
RIP Xigris drug rep.
Um, when a drug’s effect is worse than placebo, isn’t that called poison?
With the caveat that all drugs are poisons, the devil’s in the dose, yes.