New Regimen with Old Drug Slashes Blood-Clot Risk by 64%

About 20-25% of these patients will have another blood clot after the warfarin is stopped.

The new study involved 508 patients who suffered blood clots for no apparent reason and had received full-dose anticoagulation therapy for at least three months. One group received placebo and the other group continued to take a small maintenance dose of warfarin, about half the normal dose. This dose was found not to increase the risk of major bleeding; to decrease the clot risk by 64%; and the risk of clots, major internal bleeding, or death altogether by 48%. The other advantages of warfarin are that it has been in use for around 50 years and is available in a cheap generic form.

"For ethical reasons, we stopped the study three years ahead of schedule so that all patients with blood clots of unknown origin would get the chance to go on low-dose warfarin,” said Dr. Stephen Moll, director of the thrombophilia program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (www.unc.edu) and one of the principal investigators in the trial. The university was a participating center in the trial, which was supported by the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.




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