Efficacy of Deferoxamine in Preventing Complications of Iron Overload in Patients with Thalassemia Major

Abstract

The early use of deferoxamine in an amount proportional to the transfusional iron load reduces the body iron burden and helps protect against diabetes mellitus, cardiac disease, and early death in patients with thalassemia major.

Thalassemia 2016: Modern medicine battles an ancient disease

“…Three decades ago, desferrioxamine was shown to prevent many of the complications of iron overload [31]. However, desferrioxamine is not suitable for all patients and even early on, investigators were working on new chelators [32].…”

Concepts and goals in the management of transfusional iron overload

“…The accumulation of iron in the heart is not inevitable provided that liver iron levels are controlled at all times, however once iron has accumulated in the heart, it is removed much more slowly by chelation therapy than liver iron [7], which can lead to a lack of correlation of liver and heart iron in previously chelated patients. Despite chelation treatment, several studies show that for some thalassemia patients treated with deferoxamine (particularly those who start treatment late, or fail to comply with treatment), high levels of iron (above 15 mg iron per gram liver, dry weight) are still present-a level associated with a high risk of cardiac disease and early death over a long period of time [8]. Failure to control serum ferritin over prolonged periods is also associated with an increased risk of cardiac disease and death [9].…”

New film‐coated tablet formulation of deferasirox is well tolerated in patients with thalassemia or lower‐risk MDS: Results of the randomized, phase II ECLIPSE study

“…Compliance with iron chelation therapy can influence the frequency and severity of iron overload-related complications, 1 with demonstrated improvement in organ dysfunction and survival in patients compliant with iron chelation therapy. [2][3][4][5][6] The once-daily oral deferasirox dispersible tablet (DT) This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. variety of anemias, including thalassemia, myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), sickle-cell disease, and other rare anemias, 9-13 and has been used in clinical practice worldwide for over a decade.…”

“…Compliance with iron chelation therapy can influence the frequency and severity of iron overload-related complications, 1 with demonstrated improvement in organ dysfunction and survival in patients compliant with iron chelation therapy. [2][3][4][5][6] The once-daily oral deferasirox dispersible tablet (DT) formulation (Exjade ® ), available since 2005, offered an improved option over parenteral deferoxamine (Desferal ® ), providing greater compliance, patient satisfaction, and health-related quality of life. 7,8 The efficacy and safety of deferasirox DT has been well-defined through an extensive clinical trial program in adult and pediatric patients with a variety of anemias, including thalassemia, myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), sickle-cell disease, and other rare anemias, [9][10][11][12][13] and has been used in clinical practice worldwide for over a decade.…”