Abstract Background and Aims Anemia in chronic kidney disease (CKD) is multifactorial. Relative deficiency of erythropoietin is one of the key reasons for decreased RBC production. This anemia is associated with poor quality of life and increases morbidity in CKD patients. Injectable erythropoietin is the standard of care for CKD-anemia, which has safety concerns. Desidustat, an oral hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase inhibitor (HIF-PHI), stimulates endogenous erythropoiesis and is approved for CKD anemia treatment. Hence, the present study identifies the real-world clinical efficacy and safety of the desidustat treatment for a short duration in CKD anemia. Method This is an open-label, single-center, prospective study. We analyzed the data of 130 patients who are currently in follow-up and received Desidustat as treatment for CKD-anemia. The study is for the duration of 24 weeks. We followed up on patent at 1 month, 3 months, and the end of the study (6 months). Patients were given a 100-mg Desidustat tablet orally three times in a week. The primary outcome is to assess the change in Hb from baseline, and the secondary outcome is the safety of the therapy. Results In this study, we enrolled 130 patients. Of these 130 patients, 58.4% (n = 76) were male and 41.5% (n = 54) were female. The mean age of the study population was 53.6 ± 12.3 years. The majority of the study population was in the pre-dialysis category; 80% (n = 104) and 20% (n = 26) were on dialysis. All the dialysis patients were on three times per week on Dialysis. Diabetes (68%) and hypertension (75%) are the most common co-morbid conditions in patients with CKD anemia. All the patients received desidustat at a 100 mg, three-weekly dose. During each follow-up visit, a significant rise in hemoglobin was observed (p<0.001), as shown in the figure. With desidustat therapy, adverse drug reactions were seen in 5.3% (n = 7) cases: three cases of abdominal pain, two cases of vomiting, and two cases of diarrhea. Conclusion Oral HIF-PHIs and Desidustat showed significant improvement in hemoglobin in CKD anemia patients. More studies require for safety and efficacy in Dialysis dependent CKD - Anemia patients.
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