Johnson & Johnson said this week that two more patients died after
taking its Natrecor heart failure drug than the company had
reported in October.
The two deaths were omitted in a report on a study published in the
Oct. 2005 issue of The Journal of Emergency Medicine.
J&J said in a statement that it is in the process of finalizing an
audit of the data. Upon completion, it will reanalyze the data to
see if it makes a statistically significant difference in the
drug’s risk.
Natrecor is manufactured by J&J’s Scios unit and was approved in
2001. The FDA told Scios early last year to analyze further the study data for
mortality.
J&J plans a final report by the end of March.