Plavix, Aspirin Combo Reduces Stroke Risk
A new Canadian study finds that people taking the anti-plaque forming drug Plavix combined with aspirin reduced their risk of heart attacks and stroke by more than 20 percent.
Plavix, or clopidogrel, is used to prevent blood platelets from coagulating and forming clots.
The researchers combined the drug with aspirin in a clinical trial of 7,554 patients, and found it could help patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) that are not able to take other blood-thinning therapies such as warfarin.
"The purpose of the ACTIVE-A trial was to determine if the addition of clopidogrel to aspirin would reduce major vascular events and stroke in patients with AF at an acceptable risk of increased hemorrhage," Stuart Connolly of Ontario’s McMaster University told AFP.
To date, anticoagulants such as aspirin and warfarin have been the only effective therapies for treating atrial fibrillation. The disorder, in which the heart’s two upper chambers do not beat effectively, raises the risk of the blood pooling or clotting in the chambers, which could in turn trigger a stroke or heart attack.
"For the first time in 20 years, there is a new treatment for atrial fibrillation," said Connolly at the annual conference of the American College of Cardiology in Orlando, Florida.
Atrial fibrillation affects some 2.2 million Americans, many of which require a pacemaker, according to the American Heart Association. Many AF patients cannot take warfarin to prevent blood clots because the drug increases the risk of an internal hemorrhage by as much as 70 percent.
The new research found that patients taking a combination of aspirin and clopidogrel slashed their incidence of a major vascular event by 11 percent.  Furthermore, stroke risk was reduced by 28 percent, and the risk of a myocardial infarction was reduced by 23 percent.
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