Transition From Ticagrelor to Clopidogrel Following Acute Coronary Syndrome: To Bolus or Not?

Summary

After a heart attack patients are routinely started on drugs to inhibit platelets. Ticagrelor is a powerful anti-platelet drug with clinical benefits. However it must be discontinued in some, because of increased risk of bleeding or intolerance. These patients need to be transitioned to another agent, such as Clopidogrel. At present, there is no clinical consensus on the optimal strategy for this switch. Some clinicians elect to give a bolus dose of clopidogrel with 600mg, while others start directly with a 75mg daily dose, with no evidence regarding the benefits or potential complications associated with each strategy. The present proposal will evaluate the pharmacodynamics of 2 strategies with specialized platelet function testing. We hypothesize that a bolus dose of clopidogrel during the switch will confer better ischemic protection without increasing bleeding risk for patients undergoing a switch in therapy.

Timeline

Start

2013-12

Primary completion

2015-02

Completion

2015-02

Outcome

Missed primary endpoint

paper At 72 h, no difference in PRU was observed (165.8 ± 71.0 vs 184.1 ± 67.7, bolus vs no bolus, respectively, p=0.19). PMID 27761582 ↗

Publications

• Pourdjabbar A, Hibbert B, Chong AY, Le May MR, Labinaz M, Simard T, Ramirez FD, Lugomirski P, Maze R, Froeschl M, Glover C, Dick A, Marquis JF, Bernick J, Wells G, So DY; CAPITAL Investigators. A randomised study for optimising crossover from ticagrelor to clopidogrel in patients with acute coronary syndrome. The CAPITAL OPTI-CROSS Study. Thromb Haemost. 2017 Jan 26;117(2):303-310. doi: 10.1160/TH16-04-0340. Epub 2016 Oct 20.

Drugs

Indications