THURSDAY, April 19 (HealthDay News) -- A newly engineered form of the blood-thinning drug heparin has proven more effective at preventing life-threatening clots in people who suffer strokes than the older version of the drug, a new study finds.
The
"This is the first big trial in which the two treatments have gone head to head," said lead researcher Dr. David G. Sherman, a professor of medicine and neurology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, in San Antonio. "Enoxaparin pretty convincingly appears to work better."
"Now that the results have been published, the question is, what
will the bodies that write guidelines for management of
The trial was funded by Sanofi Aventis, the maker of enoxaparin (Lovenox).
The finding, reported in the April 21 issue of The Lancet, is potentially applicable to more than 700,000 people who suffer strokes in the United States each year, Sherman said. These patients are at high risk of clotting because of their forced inactivity. In fact, the 1,762 stroke patients in the study received anticoagulant treatment only if they were unable to walk.
Half of the patients were given one injection of enoxaparin a
day, the other half received two daily injections of heparin. They
were then studied for the presence of
The study included only patients who suffered ischemic stroke,
the most common kind. In this type of attack a blood clot blocks a
brain artery. However, Sherman said there are indications that the
results also apply to people who have
