Content area

Full Text

Lulu Zhang [1] and Xiaowei Hu [1] and Juehua Zhu [1] and Xiuying Cai [1] and Yan Kong [1] and Hui Wang [1] and Shanshan Diao [1] and Hongru Zhao [1] and Jianhua Jiang [1] and Dapeng Wang [1] and Quanquan Zhang [1] and Yiren Qin [1] and Wei Yue [2] and Qi Fang [1]

Academic Editor: John H. Zhang

1, Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, No. 899, Pinghai Road, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215006, China, sdfyy.cn

2, Department of Neurology, Tianjin Huanhu Hospital, No. 122, Qixiangtai Road, Hexi District, Tianjin 300060, China, tnsi.org

Received Feb 2, 2017; Revised Jun 8, 2017; Accepted Jun 20, 2017

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1. Introduction

Stroke is the second most common cause of death and is a major cause of disability worldwide [1, 2]. The prognosis of recurrent stroke is worse than first-ever stroke [3, 4]. Antiplatelet therapy is the cornerstone of the secondary prevention of ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA) [5]. However, a large number of stroke/TIA patients still experience another cerebral vascular event despite sustained antiplatelet therapy. On average, the annual risk for future ischemic stroke after an initial ischemic stroke/TIA is 3% to 4% [6]. Some researchers interpret such individual difference to antiplatelet drugs as “aspirin/clopidogrel resistance” [7–9]. Therefore, appropriate platelet function measurement to predict aspirin/clopidogrel efficacy is necessary to guide the precise stroke treatment. The current study is a multicenter study designed to evaluate the platelets’ function before and after antiplatelet therapy and analyze the relationship between qualified platelet inhibition and stroke recurrence in the Chinese population.

2. Methods

2.1. Study Design and Patients

The current study is a prospective trial that enrolled 738 patients from 13 stroke centers between October 2014 and December 2015 in China. Inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) age: ≥18 years old and ≤80 years old; (2) transient ischemic attack (TIA) for the first time, which was defined as a transient episode of neurological dysfunction caused by focal brain or retinal ischemia, without acute infarction symptoms; (3) ischemic stroke for the first time or recurrent patients with modified...

                    
 

Show less