A multinational trial was carried out by a group of researchers from University of Perugia in Italy about an oral fixed-dose therapy. The therapy included Xa inhibitor apixaban (Eliquis) which was meant to treat venous thromboembolism (VTE).

VTE is said to be quite a dangerous form of vascular death. Available treatments for VTE include enoxaparin and warfarin. The novel treatment apixaban is said to be the first-line treatment for VTE.

It has been said so as other conventional treatments have one or the other problems. In order to know the efficacy of the treatment, the study researchers enrolled 5,400 adult patients at 358 centers in 28 different countries.

Patients were randomly assigned to have apixaban. For the first week, patients were given 10 mg BID and 5 mg BID was given for six months. Those who were at conventional treatment received enoxaparin for five days and warfarin was given for six months.

The study, which has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, has found that the new treatment led to a recurrent rate of 2.3% at six months. But conventional treatment led to 2.7% at six months.

"More information is needed on reversal strategies, monitoring ... approaches to treatment failure, comparisons of adherence to treatment among new drugs and warfarin, and formal cost-effectiveness analyses", said study researchers.