Erythropoiesis-stimulating agents: friends or foes?

Patient and physician characteristics associated with erythropoiesis-stimulating agent use in patients with myelodysplastic syndromes.

Patient and physician characteristics associated with use of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents in myelodysplastic syndrome patients have not yet been described. Myelodysplastic syndrome patients diagnosed from 2001 to 2005 were identified from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results-Medicare database. Multivariate regressions examined the association between patient and physician characte...

Erythropoiesis-stimulating agents are not associated with increased risk of thrombosis in patients with myelodysplastic syndromes.

BACKGROUND There are limited reports of thrombosis among myelodysplastic syndrome patients exposed to erythropoiesis stimulating agents. It is not clear whether erythropoiesis stimulating agents are associated with an increased risk of thrombosis in myelodysplastic syndromes, as they are among patients with solid tumors. DESIGN AND METHODS The association between use of erythropoiesis stimula...

The role of erythropoietin (EPO) and erythropoiesis stimulating agents (ESAs) in tumor progression

p-ERK1/2 is a predictive factor of response to erythropoiesis-stimulating agents in low/int-1 myelodysplastic syndromes.

Serum erythropoietin level less than 100U/L and a transfusion requirement of less than 2 units per month are the best predictive factors for response to treatment by erythropoiesis-stimulating agents in low/int-1 myelodysplastic syndromes. To investigate the factors influencing the response to erythropoiesis-stimulating agents, we enrolled 127 low/int-1 myelodysplastic syndrome patients at diag...

An economic evaluation of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents in CKD

CRD summary The study assessed the cost-effectiveness of treating non-dialysis and dialysis patients with chronic kidney disease with erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) to a low, intermediate or high haemoglobin level target. The authors concluded that targeting ESA treatment to high haemoglobin levels was not associated with overall clinical benefit and resulted in considerable additiona...