The combination of aspirin and dipyridamole (a blood thinner) works better than treating with aspirin alone in preventing new vascular diseases in patients who have already had a TIA or small stroke.
These are the results of the ESPRIT study, announced in Brussels on May 19 and published in the British medical journal The Lancet. The study was coordinated by the Department of Neurology at UMC Utrecht; the Netherlands Heart Foundation funded a large part of the study.
Every year in the Netherlands, around 20,000 people have TIAs (transient ischemic attack) or small strokes as a result of hardening of the arteries. Of these people, 10 percent subsequently suffer from complications: a non-fatal stroke or heart attack, a severe hemorrhage, or even death as a result of vascular disease. Preventive treatment using aspirin – the standard treatment – only works in 13 percent of such cases.
In the ESPRIT study (European/Australasian Stroke Prevention in Reversible Ischaemia Trial), researchers compared the combination of two platelet inhibitors (dipyridamole and aspirin) with aspirin alone in preventing new vascular diseases. Of the 2739 patients, 389 had complications: this occurred 173 times in the patients receiving the combined treatment and 216 in those receiving only aspirin. Taken together with earlier research, it is now clear that the combined treatment reduces the risk of such complications by about 20 percent compared to aspirin alone.
Participating in the ESPRIT study were 2739 patients from 79 hospitals in 14 countries over a period of 3.5 years on average. ESPRIT was made possible in part by support from the Netherlands Heart Foundation, the European Union, the Netherlands Thrombosis Foundation, the Janivo Foundation, and UMC Utrecht.
A text document can be found
here.
More information:
UMC Utrecht, In- and External Communication
Linda Minnen, Annette Aarts, 088 75 574 83