SCIENCE / MEDICINE : Anti-Clot Drug Aids Heart Patients

Heart attack survivors can dramatically reduce the risk of death, stroke or a second heart attack by taking the powerful anti-clotting drug warfarin, Norwegian physicians reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In a study involving 1,214 volunteers, researchers at Ulleval University Hospital in Oslo found that subjects given warfarin instead of a placebo for at least two years suffered 24% fewer deaths, 34% fewer heart attacks and 55% fewer strokes.

The benefits to heart attack sufferers may in fact be even greater than the team concluded because some of the subjects in the warfarin group stopped taking the drug and then died or suffered a second stroke or heart attack. When the research team considered only those volunteers who were taking the medicine, the death rate was actually 35% lower, the heart attack rate 43% lower and the incidence of strokes 61% lower.

The study “furnishes strong evidence that therapy with warfarin reduces the risk of death” and subsequent heart attack, the researchers said, and the drug “can be recommended” for patients who have survived an initial heart attack.