Stroke is a common cause of disability. The most common type of stroke, an ischemic stroke, is caused by a blood vessel in the brain getting blocked by a clot. When this happens, part of the brain is damaged because it is not getting the blood supply it needs. To treat this type of stroke, doctors give medication and/or do a procedure to remove the blockage and restore blood supply to the brain. Unfortunately, patients who have had an ischemic stroke are at higher risk of having another ischemic stroke. This risk is highest in the first 21 days after a stroke. Currently, doctors give patients the medication aspirin every day, starting 24 hours after stroke treatment, to prevent recurrent strokes. However, some studies have shown that giving another medication, clopidogrel, in addition to aspirin, is safe and may work better than aspirin alone at preventing repeat strokes. Both aspirin and clopidogrel are a type of medication called an antiplatelet that prevents clots from forming in the blood. When both medications are given together, it is called dual antiplatelet treatment. The main risk of antiplatelet medications is bleeding. This research aims to study the safety and feasibility of using dual antiplatelet treatment to prevent recurrent strokes. Patients who have received treatment for an ischemic stroke will first be screened to rule out patients at high risk of bleeding. Following informed consent, patients at low risk of bleeding will be enrolled in the study 24 hours after their initial stroke treatment. Patients will be randomly assigned to either take aspirin alone or aspirin and clopidogrel for 21 days for recurrent stroke prevention. The study team will then follow patients for three months after treatment to collect information about their recovery and assess differences between the two groups.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
200
Enrolled patients with acute ischemic stroke will be randomly assigned to the clopidogrel plus aspirin group (300 mg loading dose of clopidogrel plus 160 mg aspirin on day 1; followed by clopidogrel 75 mg plus aspirin 81 mg daily from day 2-day 21, followed by aspirin 81 mg to be continued if no alternate treatment is indicated).
Aspirin 81 mg once daily alone
University of Alberta Hospital
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
RECRUITINGSafety
Safety will be assessed as a proportion of patients with symptomatic hemorrhagic transformation, defined as worsening of NIHSS ≥4 compared to NIHSS at the time of randomization and hemorrhage is attributable to the antiplatelet therapy by the treatment team.
Time frame: 90 days
Feasibility
Feasibility will be assessed as a proportion of recruited patients complete the study intervention for 21 days.
Time frame: 21 days
Early Neurological Deterioration
Secondary outcome measures include the proportion of patients with worsening focal neurologic deficit by NIHSS ≥4 at day seven or discharge not due to hemorrhagic transformation or any intracranial hemorrhage. Worsening will be defined as a change in NIHSS compared to NIHSS at the time of randomization.
Time frame: 7 days
Recurrent Stroke
Time frame: 90 days
Death
Time frame: 90 days
Non-Stroke Thrombotic events
Time frame: 90 days
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