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Anticoagulation therapy

Dabigatran—a RELY-ABLE therapy?

Nature Reviews Cardiology volume 10, page 430 (2013)Cite this article

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In patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), treatment with the direct thrombin inhibitor dabigatran etexilate is safe and effective at twice-daily doses of either 150 mg or 110 mg, report the investigators of the RELY-ABLE study—a 2-year extension of the RE-LY trial. However, the researchers confirmed that the higher dose is associated with an increased incidence of major bleeding, as the RE-LY findings had previously suggested.

In RE-LY, 18,113 patients with AF were randomly allocated to receive 150 mg or 110 mg dabigatran twice daily or adjusted-dose warfarin for 2 years. Both doses of dabigatran reduced the risk of haemorrhagic stroke, and the 150 mg dose of dabigatran was superior to warfarin therapy for preventing stroke and systemic embolism, despite a trend toward increased bleeding with the highest dose. In the RELY-ABLE trial, 5,851 RE-LY participants continued their dabigatran treatment for an additional 2 years, to further assess the safety of this therapy.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Connolly, S. J. et al. The long term multi-center observational study of dabigatran treatment in patients with atrial fibrillation: (RELY-ABLE) study. Circulation doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.112.001139

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  1. Bryony Jones
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Jones, B. Dabigatran—a RELY-ABLE therapy?. Nat Rev Cardiol 10, 430 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrcardio.2013.97

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