There’s some great news for people with heart problems, especially those with coronary artery disease. This is a condition where the blood vessels that supply blood to the heart become narrowed.
A team led by Professor Marco Valgimigli at the Cardiocentro Ticino Foundation did a big study and found something really helpful.
For a long time, doctors have been giving patients a medicine called aspirin to prevent heart problems. Aspirin works like a traffic cop, helping to keep blood flowing smoothly through your heart’s blood vessels.
People with a type of heart problem called acute coronary syndrome usually take aspirin along with another medicine called a P2Y12 inhibitor. This combo is like having two traffic cops instead of one.
In the past, a medicine called clopidogrel, which is a type of P2Y12 inhibitor, was compared with aspirin. It showed a small but good effect in reducing heart problems. Clopidogrel, along with others like prasugrel and ticagrelor, are part of the P2Y12 inhibitors family.
Now, the big news from this recent study is about these P2Y12 inhibitors. The researchers looked at over 24,000 patients with coronary artery disease.
About half of them were given a P2Y12 inhibitor, and the other half took aspirin. They followed these patients for about 557 days, which is a little over a year and a half. Most of these patients were around 64 years old, and about one out of five was a woman.
What they found is pretty exciting. The patients who took a P2Y12 inhibitor had a lower chance of getting heart attacks and strokes compared to those who just took aspirin.
In fact, the risk of heart attacks was 23% lower in the P2Y12 group. That’s a big deal because heart attacks and strokes can be very serious.
One of the things doctors worry about with these medicines is bleeding. Sometimes, medicines that prevent blood clots can also make you bleed more easily.
But the good news here is that the P2Y12 inhibitors didn’t increase the overall risk of major bleeding compared to aspirin. Even better, they found that certain types of bleeding, like in the stomach or brain, were less common in the P2Y12 group.
This study is a game-changer. It shows that P2Y12 inhibitors can be a safer and more effective option for people with coronary artery disease.
It’s like finding a better, safer way to keep the traffic flowing in the heart’s blood vessels without causing more accidents.
This study was shared with the world at the ESC Congress in 2022, and it’s making doctors rethink how they treat heart problems.
It’s important because it could help a lot of people stay healthier and avoid serious heart events without the worry of extra bleeding. This kind of research is what helps doctors make the best choices for their patients’ hearts.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that vitamin K helps cut heart disease risk by a third, and a year of exercise reversed worrisome heart failure.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about supplements that could help prevent heart disease, stroke, and results showing this food ingredient may strongly increase heart disease death risk.
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