A Narrative Review of Nonvitamin K Antagonist Oral Anticoagulant Use in Secondary Stroke Prevention

The prevalence of atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common cardiac arrhythmia, increases with age, predisposing elderly patients to an increased risk of embolic stroke. With an increasingly aged population the number of people who experience a stroke every year, overall global burden of stroke, and numbers of stroke survivors and related deaths continue to increase. Anticoagulation with vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) reduces the risk of ischemic stroke in patients with AF; however, increased bleeding risk is well documented, particularly in the elderly. Consequently, VKAs have been underused in the elderly. Alternative anticoagulants may offer a safer choice, particularly in patients who have experienced previous stroke. The aim of this narrative review is to examine available evidence for the effective treatment of patients with AF and previous cerebral vascular events with non-VKA oral anticoagulants, including the most appropriate time to start or reinitiate treatment after a stroke, systemic embolism, or clinically relevant bleed. For patients with AF treated with oral anticoagulants it is important to balance increased protection against future stroke/systemic embolism and reduced risk of major bleeding events. For patients with AF who have previously experienced a cerebrovascular event, the use of oral anticoagulants alone also appears more effective than low-molecular weight heparin (LMWH) alone or LMWH followed by oral anticoagulants. Available data suggest that significant reduction in stroke, symptomatic cerebral bleeding, and major extracranial bleeding within 90 days from acute stroke can be achieved if oral anticoagulation is initiated at 4-14 days from stroke onset

a focus on stroke in women

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The Concept of Ischemic Penumbra in Acute Stroke and Therapeutic Opportunities

Ischemic penumbra was first defined by Astrup in 1981 as perfused brain tissue at a level within the thresholds of functional impairment and morphological integrity, which has the capacity to recover if perfusion is improved. It exists, even for a short period of time in the center of ischemia, from which irreversible necrosis propagates to the neighboring tissues over time. Penumbra has become the focus of intense imaging research to differentiate it from infarction. Accurate detection of this 'tissue at risk' could be used to identify patients who would benefit most from acute treatment. Currently, recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rtPA) is the only approved drug that has shown significant benefits in acute stroke patients when administered intravenously less than 4.5 h after stroke. However, its use is limited. Discrimination between infarct core and the surrounding potentially salvageable tissue is useful to better identify patients suitable for treatment. This can be achieved by positron emission tomography, single-photon-emission computed tomography, computed tomography perfusion scan and perfusion-weighted and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. Identification of the penumbra might enable selective rtPA use in patients with large penumbras and small infarct cores, even beyond the 4.5-hour time window, where the penumbra may persist for more than 12 h. The purpose of this review was to describe neuroimaging modalities capable of identifying penumbra tissue so as to provide surrogate markers for new trials in acute ischemic stroke patients

Los Riesgos Psicosociales del trabajo en tiempos de pandemia : El caso de trabajadoras y trabajadores de salud

¿Cómo no continuar pensando en los riesgos psicosociales en los equipos de trabajo en salud en la coyuntura que se nos presentaba? La irrupción del COVID19 y el protagonismo central que cobraron trabajadoras y trabajadores de salud nos desafiaron a encontrar otras formas de abordaje, de entradas al campo y de interlocución con actores centrales del estudio. Un componente que complejiza y atraviesa nuestras reflexiones, consiste en el hecho de que varios/as de quienes conformamos este equipo de investigación nos encontramos ejerciendo nuestras profesiones en diferentes organismos/instituciones del ámbito de la salud pública.Mesa de trabajo 10: Salud Eje temático 4: Procesos de formación e intervención profesional y producción de conocimientoFacultad de Trabajo Socia

depression and stroke risk

Evaluation of: Pan A, Okereke OI, Sun Q et al. Depression and incident stroke in women. Stroke 42(10), 2770–2775 (2011). In the Nurses' Health Study, 80,574 women aged between 54 and 79 years, without a history of stroke, were followed-up from 2000 to 2006. In this cohort, depressive symptoms were assessed at multiple time points utilizing the Mental Health Index score (1992, 1996 and 2000), and clinically significant depressive symptoms were defined as a score ≤52. A survey was carried out regarding antidepressant medication use biennially beginning in 1996, and physician-diagnosed depression was reported biennially from 2000. During this 6-year follow-up, 1033 incident strokes were documented. Having a history of depression was associated with an increased risk for total stroke, as well as the use of antidepressant medications with or without history of depression

Clinical Benefit of Early Anticoagulation in Cardioembolic Stroke

Background: Nonvalvular atrial fibrillation is the most common source of cardiac embolism with a high reported risk of stroke and a high stroke-related mortality. A common clinical dilemma in patients with acute stroke is whether the detection of one of the major cardiac sources of emboli requires an early anticoagulation to reduce early stroke recurrence and mortality. Methods: In this review, we report on the results of clinical trials that have investigated the efficacy of early treatment for acute cardioembolic stroke. Results: Large clinical trials demonstrate that there is no evidence supporting the administration of heparin in patients with acute ischemic stroke within 48 h from stroke onset. Conclusions: The results of recent studies showing an advantage of the very early administration of heparin (<3 h from stroke onset) should encourage clinicians to perform further trials on the efficacy of an early administration of heparin in acute cardioembolic stroke

Gene-Drug Interaction in Stroke

Stroke is the third cause of mortality and one of most frequent causes of long-term neurological disability, as well as a complex disease that results from the interaction of environmental and genetic factors. The focus on genetics has produced a large number of studies with the objective of revealing the genetic basis of cerebrovascular diseases. Furthermore, pharmacogenetic research has investigated the relation between genetic variability and drug effectiveness/toxicity. This review will examine the implications of pharmacogenetics of stroke; data on antihypertensives, statins, antiplatelets, anticoagulants, and recombinant tissue plasminogen activator will be illustrated. Several polymorphisms have been studied and some have been associated with positive drug-gene interaction on stroke, but the superiority of the genotype-guided approach over the clinical approach has not been proved yet; for this reason, it is not routinely recommended

Response to Letter by Guedes and Ferro

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Early seizures in patients with acute stroke: Frequency, predictive factors, and effect on clinical outcome

Andrea Alberti, Maurizio Paciaroni, Valeria Caso, Michele Venti, Francesco Palmerini, Giancarlo AgnelliStroke Unit and Division of Internal and Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Perugia, Perugia, ItalyBackground: Early seizure (ES) may complicate the clinical course of patients with acute stroke. The aim of this study was to assess the rate of and the predictive factors for ES as well the effects of ES on the clinical outcome at hospital discharge in patients with first-ever stroke.Patients and methods: A total of 638 consecutive patients with first-ever stroke (543 ischemic, 95 hemorrhagic), admitted to our Stroke Unit, were included in this prospective study. ES were defined as seizures occurring within 7 days from acute stroke. Patients with history of epilepsy were excluded.Results: Thirty-one patients (4.8%) had ES. Seizures were significantly more common in patients with cortical involvement, severe and large stroke, and in patient with cortical hemorrhagic transformation of ischemic stroke. ES was not associated with an increase in adverse outcome (mortality and disability). After multivariate analysis, hemorrhagic transformation resulted as an independent predictive factor for ES (OR = 6.5; 95% CI: 1.95&ndash;22.61; p = 0.003).Conclusion: ES occur in about 5% of patients with acute stroke. In these patients hemorrhagic transformation is a predictive factor for ES. ES does not seem to be associated with an adverse outcome at hospital discharge after acute stroke.Keywords: seizures, stroke, cortical involvement, hemorrhagic transformatio