NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Among low-risk patients undergoing elective percutaneous coronary intervention, 1-year outcomes are worse if their antiplatelet response to clopidogrel is low, an Italian team reports.

However, the researchers also found that poor responders to clopidogrel benefit from glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitor treatment, whereas full responders do not.

The findings are reported in the October 26th issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology by Dr. Gianluca Campo, at Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria S. Anna, in Ferrara, and colleagues.

The authors note that response to standard dual antiplatelet therapy with aspirin and clopidogrel varies widely between patients, but the prognostic implications of this variance is unclear in low-risk patients undergoing elective PCI.

As a prespecified substudy of the 3T/2R trial, the team screened 826 PCI patients for full or poor response to aspirin and/or clopidogrel, and correlated the results with outcomes at 1 year.

Platelet function was measured with commercially available VerifyNow point-of-care tests. The results classified 548 patients as aspirin and/or clopidogrel