Aspirin, along with the blood thinner Plavix, helped people with a common heartbeat abnormality from getting a stroke and heart attack. Doctors claim that having this abnormality raises their risk for these problems.
This specific treatment is for a rhythm disorder, called atrial fibrillation, that 2.2 million Americans suffer from. It happens when the upper parts of the heart flutter instead of beating normally. This causes blood to pool and form clots that can make their way to the brain, resulting in a stroke.
The blood thinner warfarin, sold as Coumadin and in generic form, is the normal treatment for this condition. Unfortunately, zeroing in on the right dose tends to be tricky – too little and a stroke could result and too much could cause life-threatening bleeding. Patients using the drug have to go to the doctor often for blood tests to monitor their dosage.
Because of these complications, almost half of patients take aspirin instead of warfarin, even though aspirin is way less effective at preventing strokes.
Dr. Stuart Connolly of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, was in charge of a study that tested whether adding clopidogrel, sold as Plavix by French-based Sanofi-Aventis SA, could be effective. There were 7,554 U.S. patients and 32 other countries who either were not able to or chose not to take the drug warfarin; also half were given Plavix.
At the end of four years of observance, the dual drug treatment lowered the number of these combined conditions – heart attacks, heart-related deaths, strokes and blood clots – by 11 percent. There were 924 of these problems in patients who took only aspirin versus only 832 patients who also took Plavix. Despite that, the combination treatment did raise the risk for serious bleeding – 251 cases against 162 who took only aspirin.
Dr. Connolly said that patients on the combination still fared better. In three years, for every 1,000 patients treated, the combination prevented 28 strokes and six heart attacks and resulted in 20 bleeding cases.
Results were given March 31 at an American College of Cardiology conference and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.
0 Responses to “Plavix with aspirin may help prevent strokes and heart attacks”
Leave a Reply