ISN Education & Cochrane Kidney and Transplant present materials on Erythropoiesis-stimulating agents for anemia

Making evidence easier to find and use

Cochrane Kidney and Transplant join together with the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) to provide user-friendly summaries of Cochrane evidence. These educational materials, produced about four times a year, discuss a recently released Cochrane Kidney and Transplant review.

ISN Education: Cochrane Library: Erythropoiesis-stimulating agents for anemia (new evidence summary) Suetonia Palmer, Giovanni Strippoli

Cochrane Kidney and Transplant and the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) have joined together to provide a user friendly summary for clinicians about the latest Cochrane evidence for anaemia treatment. This is now available at ISN Education and includes a short podcast which can be downloaded to your PC or mobile device to listen to ‘on the run.

There are many different anaemia treatments for chronic kidney disease. These have been reviewed in a recent Cochrane review. These include ESAs which are drugs that act like the natural hormone in the body which boosts blood cell production called erythropoietin. When kidney function falls, the body doesn’t produce as much erythropoietin, leading to anaemia, and potentially fatigue and breathlessness.

There are several drugs that act like erythropoietin available to treat anaemia. At last count, there were 56 trials involving nearly 16,000 people with chronic kidney disease. These trials assessed the effectiveness and safety of five different ESAs against each other or placebo.

In this Cochrane review, the evidence has been brought together within a network [read more information about network analysis in a special collection by Cochrane] to compare all treatments with each other.

Suetonia Giovanni The review found that there is no strong evidence that ESAs have different benefits (preventing blood transfusions) or toxicity (high blood pressure, vascular events) but information about treatment on patient-centred benefits such as reducing breathlessness or improving fatigue was very sparse. Current therapy for anaemia can be based on drug availability and patient preferences for frequency of treatment.

Watch this space for the next user friendly summary of Cochrane evidence which will discuss an updated Cochrane review about steroid therapy for the nephrotic syndrome in children.