The lives of thousands of accident and trauma victims could be saved with the increased use of a cheap and effective drug, a new study contends.

The medication is called tranexamic acid, or TXA. It works by inhibiting an enzyme that break down blood clots, thereby slowing bleeding.

The drug is already commonly used during elective surgeries to stem bleeding, but hasn't been regularly prescribed for accident victims.

If it were, it could save the lives of more than 100,000 adult trauma patients around the world every year if it were used routinely, conclude the authors.

For the research, British scientists studied 20,000 patients across 40 countries, giving half of them TXA and half a placebo. They found that TXA significantly cut death rates.

They found that patients who got TXA had a 15 per cent lower chance of dying from a hemorrhage than those who didn't get it. They also had a 10 per cent lower chance of dying from any other cause, including organ failure and a head injury, versus patients who didn't receive TXA.

TXA is a cheap, off-patent medication that is manufactured generically by many companies. It costs about US$4.50 per gram, and a typical dose is two grams.

"This is one of the cheapest ways ever to save a life," chief investigator Ian Roberts, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Previous research has focused on the drug's use in surgery, but this was the first study to test the drug on accident victims. Although there were concerns that the TXA might increase the risk of complications, such as strokes and clots in the lungs, they said their study, called CRASH-2, found few of these complications.

"The good news was we didn't see any evidence of increase [in unwanted clotting] at all," chief investigator Ian Roberts, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told press conference Wednesday. "In fact, we saw some decrease in the risk."

Each year, about 600,000 people who are injured in accidents or in shootings and stabbings eventually die because of bleeding. Most of them die within the first day, often in hospital. In fact, hemorrhaging is responsible for about a third of in-hospital trauma deaths. It can also contribute to deaths later on from multi-organ failure.

Roberts and colleagues estimate that if TXA were readily available, between 70,000 and 100,000 lives a year could be saved. That's why his team is recommending that TXA be considered for inclusion on the WHO List of Essential Medicines.

The researchers say there could be other potential applications of TXA, such as reduction of brain bleeds after brain injury, though the drug would have be tested further in those patients.

As well, it could be used to reduce postpartum bleeding in new mothers, which causes around 100,000 deaths each year, mostly in the developing world. A large trial to assess TXA for this purpose is in progress.

And though the drug hasn't been widely tested in children, the researchers say it would almost certainly work in them as well.

The authors conclude: "Tranexamic acid could be given in a wide range of health-care settings, and safely reduced the risk of death in bleeding trauma patients in our study. The option to use tranexamic acid should be available to doctors treating trauma patients in all countries," they write

The research is published in the Online First edition of The Lancet. It was funded by England's National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment program.