Wall Street acts on N.Z. drug study

Press, 3 April 1989, Page 9

Wall Street acts on N.Z. drug study

PA Auckland A New Zealand study of a highly expensive drug used in the treatment of heart attacks has sent share prices tumbling for the United States company that makes it. The study, published in the “New England Journal of Medicine,” compared unfavourably the drug, tissue plasminogen activator, with an older and far cheaper drug, streptokinase. An editorial in the same journal supported the New Zealand findings. The Wall Street stock exchange immediately responded, with share prices for the company which manufactures T.P.A., Genentech, tumbling SUS2.IS to $U517.75 ($3.52 to $29.10). Both drugs are used intravenously to dissolve blood clots that cause acute heart attacks. If applied within one hour of the onset of a heart attack, such therapy can

reduce mortality -50 per cent.

The “Wall St Journal” described the study as driving a deadly stake into Genentech’s “already shaky claim” that its brand of T.P.A., called Activase, merits a much loftier price than streptokinase.

In New Zealand, a single dose of activase costs about $3700. A dose of streptokinase costs about $4OO. The study was conducted by a team of doctors at the four Auckland public hospitals that have coronary-care units. It was headed by Dr Harvey White, of Green Lane Hospital, who described it as “a major study which will have major input.” The study involved 270 patients over a two-year period. Half received streptokinase and half T.P.A. Patients were treated less than three hours after the onset of chest pain.

Three weeks after treatment, the study found no difference in left ventricular function — a key measure of the heart’s pumping ability — between patients in the two treatment groups.

Nine months after therapy, no significant difference in survival between the groups was observed. Because of the small number of patients treated, however, the authors said they could not determine whether the drug had a similar effect on the death rate.

The Auckland report is believed to be the first from New Zealand to be accepted by the influential journal. It is also one of the first studies into this type of therapy.

Doctors involved in it are elated at its acceptance and its expected effects. They regard it as a medical equivalent of winning a gold medal.

Genentech has criticised the study as being too small and too old.