New Clinical Alert Issued by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) issued a new Clinical Alert on October 21, 2011:

Commonly Used Three-drug Regimen for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Found Harmful: NIH Stops One Treatment Arm of Trial; Other Two Treatments to Continue

NHLBI has stopped one arm of a three arm multi-center, clinical trial studying treatments for the lung-scarring disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) for safety concerns. The trial found that people with IPF receiving a currently used triple-drug therapy consisting of prednisone, azathioprine, and N-acetylcysteine (NAC) had worse outcomes than those who received placebos or inactive substances.

Links to Clinical Alerts/Advisories can also be found from these NLM® Web sites:

• A complete list of all Clinical Alerts/Advisories is available from the NIH Clinical Alerts and Advisories page on the NLM Web site.
• MedlinePlus® features Clinical Alerts/Advisories as NIH Press Releases on the appropriate Health Topics page(s).
• PubMed®, the NLM Gateway and ClinicalTrials.gov each have access points to the Clinical Alerts/Advisories.

New Clinical Alert Issued by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). NLM Tech Bull. 2011 Sep-Oct;(382):e15.