Aspirin combined with the antiplatelet drug clopidogrel is no better than aspirin alone for stroke prevention in people with a history of lacunar strokes, and the combination carries a greater risk of gastrointestinal bleeding, according to results of a trial funded by the National Institutes of Health. The Secondary Prevention of Small Subcortical Strokes (SPS3) trial was designed to determine if adding clopidogrel to aspirin would offer better protection than aspirin alone. The SPS3 trial involved more than 3,000 participants, all of whom had a recent history of lacunar stroke. The results, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, show that the aspirin-clopidogrel combination was about equal to aspirin in reducing the risk of any type of stroke, but it almost doubled the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding. Last year, NIH issued a clinical alert warning that there was “little likelihood of benefit in favor of aspirin plus clopidogrel [for] recurrent stroke.”
In the study, which also tested two levels of blood pressure control, about half of the participants received 325 milligrams of aspirin and 75 milligrams of clopidogrel daily, and the other half received aspirin and placebo. The participants were also randomly assigned to receive either standard control of systolic blood pressure (less than 130 mm Hg) or aggressive control (130 to149 mm Hg). After eight years of study, the annual risk of recurrent stroke was 2.7 percent in the aspirin-only group and 2.5 percent in the aspirin plus clopidogrel group. Read the “free preview” of the study.
