Abstract
Background—Vorapaxar, a protease‐activated receptor‐1 antagonist, is approved for secondary prevention of cardiovascular events but is associated with increased intracranial hemorrhage.
Methods and Results—TRACER (Thrombin Receptor Antagonist for Clinical Event Reduction in Acute Coronary Syndrome) was a trial of vorapaxar versus placebo among patients with acute coronary syndrome. Strokes were adjudicated by a central events committee. Of 12 944 patients, 199 (1.5%) had ≥1 stroke during the study period (median follow‐up, 477 days). Four patients had a single stroke of unknown type; 195 patients had ≥1 stroke classified as hemorrhagic or nonhemorrhagic (165 nonhemorrhagic, 28 hemorrhagic, and 2 both). Strokes occurred in 96 of 6473 patients (1.5%) assigned vorapaxar and 103 of 6471 patients (1.6%) assigned placebo. Kaplan‐Meier incidence of stroke for vorapaxar versus placebo was higher for hemorrhagic stroke (0.45% versus 0.14% [hazard ratio, 2.74; 95% confidence interval, 1.22–6.15]), lower but not significantly different for nonhemorrhagic stroke (1.53% versus 1.98% at 2 years [hazard ratio, 0.79; 95% confidence interval, 0.58–1.07]), and similar for stroke overall (1.93% versus 2.13% at 2 years [hazard ratio, 0.94; 95% confidence interval, 0.71–1.24]).
Conclusions— Stroke occurred in < 2% of patients. Vorapaxar‐assigned patients had increased hemorrhagic stroke but a nonsignificant trend toward lower nonhemorrhagic stroke. Overall stroke frequency was similar with vorapaxar versus placebo.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-18-2018
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.118.009609
Funding Information
The TRACER (Thrombin Receptor Antagonist for Clinical Event Reduction in Acute Coronary Syndrome) trial was funded by Merck & Co.
Related Content
An accompanying Figure S1 is available at https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/suppl/10.1161/JAHA.118.009609.
Melloni had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for its integrity and the data analysis.
Repository Citation
Ungar, Leo; Clare, Robert M.; Rodriguez, Fatima; Kolls, Bradley J; Armstrong, Paul W.; Aylward, Philip; Held, Claes; Moliterno, David J.; Strony, John; Van de Werf, Frans; Wallentin, Lars; White, Harvey D.; Tricoci, Pierluigi; Harrington, Robert A.; Mahaffey, Kenneth W.; and Melloni, Chiara, "Stroke Outcomes with Vorapaxar Versus Placebo in Patients with Acute Coronary Syndromes: Insights From the TRACER Trial" (2018). Gill Heart & Vascular Institute Faculty Publications. 15.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/heart_facpub/15
Supplemental Material: Figure S1.
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Journal of the American Heart Association, v. 7, issue 24, e009609, p. 1-10.
© 2018 The Authors. Published on behalf of the American Heart Association,Inc., by Wiley.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.