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Plavix reduces risk of death in certain heart failure patients

Category: Heart Health and Cholesterol

The blood-thinning drug known as Plavix is capable of moderately reducing the mortality rate of heart failure patients who have a heart attack but do not undergo an angioplasty, which is a procedure to open blocked arteries, a recent European study has found.

During the research, Danish investigators analyzed more than 31,000 patients who were admitted to the hospital after suffering a heart attack between 2000 and 2005, according to Health Day News.

After a mean follow-up period of 18 months, the research team discovered that 32.2 percent of heart failure patients who were not treated with Plavix had died. In contrast, only 28.1 percent of heart failure patients who were prescribed the anti-clotting medication had passed away during the same period.

In an accompanying editorial, Victor Serebruany, a researcher from the HeartDrug Research Laboratories at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, wrote that the benefit of Plavix is of "unquestionable practical importance" in the treatment of heart failure patients.

However, on March 12 the FDA put a black-box warning on the second best-selling blood thinner, cautioning that it may not work for everyone, the Wall Street Journal reports.