My dad worked for Cilag AG (now merged to Jansen-Cilag which cost my dad the job
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) a swiss pharma company. They tested their Eprex brand of EPO for Thal. and my dad was obviously interested; it showed mixed results; some patients had a minor benefit but the cost of these at that time were ridiculously high compared to the gain in Hb. while it totally failed in many patients.
I doubt they knew about the Intermedia factor in detail about 15 odd yrs ago; so it could be the reason for some patients to benefit; furthermore a slight variation in Hb could be due to other factors like dehydration and lab errors. Like once my HB increased instead of going down between two tests a few months ago
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