A new anti-platelet therapy significantly reduces the risk of heart-attack recurrence even after one year, according to new research.
Physicians at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said that adding vorapaxar to standard therapy would improve post-heart attack treatment, and they identified a particular low-bleeding group of patients that would benefit from vorapaxar.
The drug’s sponsor, Merck is seeking approval in the United States and Europe for the drug, which would be administered to patients with a history of heart attack but with no history of stroke. Vorapaxar also seemed to be most effective with patients who were under 75 years old and weighed more than 130 pounds.
Previously, the results of two clinical trials showed that vorapaxar caused an unacceptably high incidence of bleeding among subjects, including intracranial hemorrhaging. But in this latest study, administering the drug to only groups at low risk for bleeding removed that risk.
