Dietmar Trenk

Aims Clinical guidelines recommend de-escalation antiplatelet strategies to reduce bleeding risk in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients, albeit with a weak recommendation. This substudy of the TROPICAL-ACS trial aimed to determine the impact of body mass on the efficacy of a platelet function testing-guided de-escalation regimen in ACS patients after percutaneous coronary intervention. Methods and results Patients were randomized to prasugrel (control group) or a platelet function testing-guided regimen with clopidogrel or prasugrel defined after 1-week clopidogrel. The primary endpoint was the net clinical benefit [cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, stroke, or Bleeding Academic Research Consortium (BARC) 2–5 bleeding] for 12 months. Overweight was defined as a body mass index >25 kg/m2. Patients without overweight showed a significant net clinical benefit from the de-escalation strategy, while in overweight cases de-escalation was comparable to prasugrel treatment [hazard ratio (HR): 0.52; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.31–0.88; P = 0.013 and HR: 0.95; 95% CI: 0.69–1.31, P = 0.717, P-non-inferiority = 0.03, respectively, P-interaction = 0.053]. The benefit of de-escalation in terms of the risk of bleeding or of the ischaemic events did not reach statistical significance. Bleeding events with de-escalation were less frequent in non-overweight patients but comparable in overweight patients (HR: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.30–1.03; P = 0.057 and HR: 0.95; 95% CI: 0.64–1.41, respectively, P-interaction = 0.147). Non-overweight patients had lower ischaemic event rates with de-escalation, while overweight cases had slightly less (HR: 0.47; 95% CI: 0.18–1.25; P = 0.128 and HR: 0.89; 95% CI: 0.53–1.50, respectively, P-interaction = 0.261). Conclusion The strategy of guided dual antiplatelet therapy de-escalation was associated with a significant net clinical benefit in non-overweight patients, while the two strategies were equivalent in overweight patients.