VIDEO: Roxadustat maintains hemoglobin levels regardless of iron status
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Jay B. Wish, MD, professor of clinical medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine and co-chair of the Nephrology News & Issues Editorial Advisory Board, talked about a subanalysis presented at ASN Kidney Week on roxadustat.
The data showed that roxadustat increased and maintained hemoglobin levels in patients with non-dialysis-dependent chronic kidney disease and anemia regardless of iron status at baseline.
“This is again, part of the revolutionary, if you will, physiology or pharmacology of the HIF stabilizers vs. the ESA. The ESAs do one thing ... they’re a one-trick pony. They have nothing to do with iron and part of the problem we have when we treat patients with an ESA is both absolute and functional iron deficiency,” Wish said.
According to Wish, an ESA alone does not overcome iron deficiency.
“What they found was basically there was no difference, and this definitely wouldn’t be the case if we were using an ESA,” he said. “This kind of confirms our understanding of the mechanism of action of the HIF stabilizers – that they not only stimulate erythropoietin, they also mobilize all these other proteins that are involved in iron absorption and iron mobilization so that you don’t have a blunted response to the agent in the setting of iron deficiency as you would in the case of using just an ESA.”
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Provenzano R, et al. #TH-OR-03. Presented at: ASN Kidney Week. Oct. 22-25 (virtual meeting).
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