Adding Blood Thinner to Aspirin to Prevent Heart Attacks is Risky

ATLANTA (AP) — Some people taking the blood thinner Plavix on top of aspirin to try to prevent heart attacks, as many doctors recommend, now have good reason to stop.

The drug combination not only didn’t help most people in a newly released study, but it unexpectedly almost doubled the risk of death, heart attack or stroke for those with no clogged arteries but with worrisome conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

“They actually were harmed,” said Dr. Eric Topol. “This was a trial to determine the boundaries of benefit, and it did. You don’t use this drug for patients without coronary artery disease.”

Nothing in the study changes recommendations that people who recently have had heart attacks or a procedure to unclog an artery take those medicines. This study dealt with expanding use of the drug to other people.

Topol and Dr. Deepak Bhatt of the Cleveland Clinic led the study, which involved 15,603 people in 32 countries. Topol has since left the clinic and is at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Results were reported Sunday at an American College of Cardiology conference.