Assessment of Effectiveness and Side Effects of Osveral Chelator Drug in Major Thalassemia Patients with Iron Overload

Major thalassemia is a genetic anemia that requires patients to have frequentblood transfusions. This increased iron deposition in tissues of liver, heart and other organs and it can damage to them. To reduce iron deposition in tissues, several chelator drugs are taken to reduce iron. Osveral, a chelator drug is one of these drugs that in the present study its efficacy and side effects has been studied.In a clinical trial before - after procedure, 80 patients with major thalassemia(38 males and 42 females) aged 3 to 31 years were studied. The duration of trial was one year. The efficacy was determined by comparison of ferritin level before and after treatment and duration of trial. For statistical analysis of data used T- testfor dependent groups (Paired t-test) and repeated analysis of variance (Repeatedmeasure).Serum ferritin changed from first month to last month of trial, which decreased significantly (t=4.96, P<0.05). Serum ferritin decreased from 2094.4 ± 796.96 significantly decreased to 1578.73 ± 784.6. (t=4.96, P<0.05). In addition, serum ferritin changes during study. Repeated analysis of variance showed a significant reduction in ferritin levels atduration of study (F1, 79=22.13, P<0.001).Diagram of changes ofserum ferritin levels showsthat globally Serum ferritin levels decreased but small increase during the third and fourth months was happened.Findings indicate that osveral as a chelator drug decrease serum ferritin levels in majorthalassemia patients.