Boehringer plans lysis trial

Boehringer Ingelheim has announced that it is sponsoring a new trial investigating the treatment of heart attacks.

The Stream (STrategic Reperfusion Early After Myocardial Infarction) trial will investigate the idea that lysis treatment of patients (through Metalyse) within two or three hours of symptom onset results in a reduced mortality rate.

Professor Frans Van de Werf, chairman of the department of cardiology at Belgium’s University Hospital Gasthuisberg and principal investigator of the Stream trial, suggested that this method of treatment was more effective than “patients undergoing a delayed primary percutaneous intervention (PCI)”.

“Thrombolysis continues to be the most rapidly and most widely available form of treatment for many, if not most, of those who suffer a heart attack,” said Dr Manfred Haehl, corporate senior vice president medicine, Boehringer Ingelheim.

He added that the Stream aims to prove that results can be “as good as – or even better than” those seen with PCI.

The trial will involve some 2,000 patients across 200 international sites, the company has said.

Boehringer Ingelheim was founded in 1885 in Germany’s Ingelheim am Rhein.