Thromb Haemostasis
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Review Comparative Study
Pharmacogenetic differences between warfarin, acenocoumarol and phenprocoumon.
Coumarin oral anticoagulant drugs have proven to be effective for the prevention of thromboembolic events. World-wide, warfarin is the most prescribed drug. In Europe, acenocoumarol and phenprocoumon are also administered. ⋯ In the long term, patients using phenprocoumon have more often international normalised ratio (INR) values in the therapeutic range, requiring fewer monitoring visits. This leads us to conclude that in the absence of pharmacogenetic testing, phenprocoumon seems preferable for use in long-term therapeutic anticoagulation. Pharmacogenetic testing before initiating coumarin oral anticoagulants may add to the safety of all coumarin anticoagulants especially in the elderly receiving multiple drugs.
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Clinical Trial
Thrombotic events in high risk patients are predicted by evaluating different pathways of platelet function.
A higher rate of clinical events in poor clopidogrel and/or aspirin responders was documented by using different methods to measure platelet function, but no conclusive data about the appropriate methodology to explore platelet reactivity are available. A total of 746 patients included in the cohort of the RECLOSE trial who had successful drug-eluting stent implantation were assessed for post-treatment residual platelet reactivity (RPR) in platelet-rich plasma by 10 microM adenosine 5'-diphosphate (ADP), 1 mM arachidonic acid (AA) and 2 microg/ml collagen-induced platelet aggregation and in whole blood by the PFA-100 system. ⋯ The positive likelihood ratio values of RPR by three stimuli (9.55) or of RPR by ADP and collagen (8.08) were higher than those of RPR by ADP (2.59), by AA (2.05), by collagen (4.73), or by PFA-100 (2.63). This prospective study documents that the evaluation of platelet reactivity addressed to identify patients at risk of thrombotic events on dual antiplatelet treatment has to be carried out by methods able to explore different pathways.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Clinical course and outcome of disseminated intravascular coagulation diagnosed by Japanese Association for Acute Medicine criteria. Comparison between sepsis and trauma.
The Japanese Association for Acute Medicine (JAAM) disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) study group recently announced new diagnostic criteria for DIC. These criteria have been prospectively validated and demonstrated to progress to overt DIC as defined by the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH). Although an underlying condition is essential for the development of DIC, it has never been clarified if patients with different underlying disorders have a similar course. ⋯ More than 50% of the JAAM DIC patients with sepsis who died within 28 days could not be detected by ISTH DIC criteria during the initial three days. In contrast, most trauma patients who died within 28 days had DIC simultaneously diagnosed by JAAM and ISTH criteria, except for those with brain death. These findings suggest that coagulation abnormalities, organ dysfunction, and the outcome of JAAM DIC differ between patients with sepsis and trauma.