An inexpensive drug could save tens of thousands of lives lost in accidents and war every year by minimizing excessive bleeding, British researchers reported Monday. The drug, called tranexamic acid, is already used during surgeries in many developed countries to prevent unwanted bleeding, but the results from a massive clinical trial reported in the journal Lancet indicate that it could be used on an everyday basis even in the poorest countries.
Physicians had feared that such widespread use of the drug might lead to heart attacks, embolisms or other problems resulting from clot formation, but the new study showed an excellent safety profile for the drug.
For people ages 5 to 45, injuries due to accidents are second only to HIV/AIDS as a cause of death worldwide. Overall, road traffic accidents are the ninth-leading cause of death and they are expected to climb to third by 2020 as more people in developing countries own cars. More than 90% of trauma deaths occur in low-income countries.
Tranexamic acid, a simple synthetic derivative of the naturally occurring amino acid lysine, interferes with the natural process by which the body's cardiovascular system breaks down potentially dangerous clots. That system can be beneficial when a clot forms as the result of plaque, for example, but it can also inhibit clot formation in the case of excessive bleeding. Epidemiologist Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and his colleagues reasoned that the drug might thus be useful in accidents to minimize bleeding.
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