The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has updated the label information for the commonly used anti-clotting medication Plavix® (clopidogrel) to stress to physicians that patients carrying certain genetic variations may not receive the full benefit from the drug.
Plavix reduces the chance a harmful clot will develop by preventing blood cells called platelets from sticking [...]

Tags: black box, boxed warning, clopidogrel, CYP2C19, Effient, FDA, metabolizer, Plavix, prasugrel

Medco Health Solutions, Inc., announced this week that it will conduct a clinical trial to assess whether clopidogrel bisulfate (Plavix®, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-aventis) is just as effective as the newer drug prasugrel (Effient™, Eli Lilly and Company) in people who lack a genetic variation that inhibits their metabolism of clopidogrel. This new research has [...]

Tags: clopidogrel, clotting, comparative effectiveness research, CYP2C19, Effient, Francis Collins, heart, Medco, pharmacogenomics, Plavix, prasugrel

SNPwatch gives you the latest news about research linking various traits and conditions to individual genetic variations. These studies are exciting because they offer a glimpse into how genetics may affect our bodies and health; but in most cases, more work is needed before this research can provide information of value to individuals. For that [...]

Tags: clopidogrel, CYP2C19, heart attack, New England Journal of Medicine, Plavix, The Lancet