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September 24, 2009 -- 11:45am PDT

Prilosec and Plavix Together Again!
Breaking and big news for heart patients: the controversy over taking Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPI) along with clopidogrel (Plavix) has been addressed by a large randomized clinical trial which showed no interaction between these drugs!

This translates to an immediate and important message to patients: it is safe to take your Prilosec (and other similar drugs, such as Nexium, Prevacid and Protonix) with your Plavix! In fact, one of the reasons these two drugs have been prescribed together is that the PPIs can allay gastric problems and bleeding that may be a side effect of Plavix -- something which can have an important beneficial effect.

The COGENT Study, subtitled "A Prospective, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Omeprazole in Patients Receiving Aspirin and Clopidogrel" was just presented by Dr. Deepak L. Bhatt at the TCT 2009 meeting in San Francisco and there will be a full report of that study later on Angioplasty.Org.

As I have reported previously, there have been a number of conflicting studies of this issue, one of the most recent being a major report from Medco Health, which was presented at the recent SCAI annual meeting. But this was an observational study -- large populations of patients were looked at via prescription records, etc. However, lacking a definitive trial, this and other studies have caused patients to stop taking these drugs together.

So the panel of physicians at this morning's press conference was quite vocal and joined in a strong opinion that true scientific evidence can only be discerned in a randomized clinical trial (RCT). As Dr. Christopher Cannon stated:

More to come....

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