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Are generic immunosuppressants safe and effective?


July 15, 2015

That is the question that Dr. Greg Knoll set out to research when he was asked to debate the topic during the 2014 annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Transplantation. Together with research fellow Dr. Amber Molnar, Dr. Dean Fergusson and others, Dr. Knoll conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to help answer the question and was surprised to find that there were very few high quality studies with long-term follow up. Generic drugs have the potential for huge costs savings, however many doctors remain unconvinced that generic immunosuppressants, which need to be monitored very closely for toxicity, are truly equivalent to their brand name counterparts. “Reviewing the data was really eye-opening – the data quality was so poor for such an important issue,” explained Dr. Knoll. The results are published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Other co-authors: Anne K Tsampalieros, Alexandria Bennett, Nicholas Fergusson, Timothy Ramsay.

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