Bayer completes enrolment for stroke drug trial

BARCELONA (Reuters) - German drug maker Bayer said on Sunday it had completed enrolling patients into a final-stage clinical study, which will test its drug Xarelto against the established but difficult-to-use treatment warfarin in preventing strokes.

Results of the 14,269-patient Phase III double-blind trial are due in 2010.

That puts Bayer and its development partner Johnson & Johnson around a year behind unlisted German group Boehringer Ingelheim, which earlier reported strong results with Pradaxa, a rival drug, in the same clinical setting.

Researchers outlined the design of the new Xarelto study at the European Society of Cardiology congress in Barcelona, where the Pradaxa data was also unveiled.

Both Pradaxa and Xarelto are approved in Europe to prevent blood clots in patients undergoing replacement hip or knee surgery. But the big commercial opportunity lies in giving them on a long-term basis to patients with atrial fibrillation, a common heart arrhythmia that increases the risk of stroke.

Although they are competitors, the two drugs work in different ways to prevent clotting. Pradaxa belongs to a class of drugs known as direct thrombin inhibitors, while Xarelto is a direct Factor Xa inhibitor.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Mike Nesbit)