Mitoxantrone: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Mitoxantrone is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Injectable
- Sold as
- Novantrone
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Every mitoxantrone product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Novantrone.
Mitoxantrone and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for mitoxantrone: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadMost sources consider breastfeeding to be contraindicated during maternal antineoplastic drug therapy, such as mitoxantrone. It might be possible to breastfeed safely during intermittent therapy with an appropriate period of breastfeeding abstinence, but the duration of abstinence is not clear. In one patient, mitoxantrone was still detectable in milk 28 days after a dose of 6 mg per square meter. Chemotherapy may adversely affect the normal microbiome and chemical makeup of breastmilk. Women who receive chemotherapy during pregnancy are more likely to have difficulty nursing their infant.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised July 15, 2024. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about mitoxantrone
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 974 reports naming mitoxantrone, and the FDA flagged 98% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- febrile neutropenia178 reports
- pyrexia88 reports
- neutropenia82 reports
- myelosuppression68 reports
- sepsis62 reports
- hypotension57 reports
- septic shock47 reports
- platelet count decreased46 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean mitoxantrone caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 25, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take mitoxantrone with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run mitoxantrone against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What forms does mitoxantrone come in?
Across the brands we track, mitoxantrone is currently marketed as injectable, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic mitoxantrone?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled mitoxantrone product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Mitoxantrone: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/mitoxantrone
- MLA
- “Mitoxantrone: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/mitoxantrone.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for mitoxantrone on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.