f working with hospital formularies, protocol committees, government and managed care reimbursement bodies to bring this medicine to patients. Navigating these steps, which are necessary before BRILINTA will be available to a substantial number of incident ACS patients, will be a key focus for the next 12 months.
The FDA approval is based upon data from the landmark PLATO (A Study of PLATelet Inhibition and Patient Outcomes) study, a superiority trial that compared treatment with BRILINTA to clopidogrel in 18,624 ACS patients worldwide.
BRILINTA, like other antiplatelet agents, can cause significant, sometimes fatal, bleeding. In PLATO, there was no statistical difference in patients treated with BRILINTA compared to patients treated with clopidogrel in total major bleeding events (11.6% vs. 11.2%), including fatal and fatal/life-threatening bleeding events.2 Non-CABG (coronary artery bypass graft) major + minor bleeding events (8.7% vs. 7%) were more common with BRILINTA versus clopidogrel.
The most commonly observed adverse reactions associated with the use of BRILINTA vs. clopidogrel were bleeding (11.6% vs.11.2%) and a feeling of breathlessness called dyspnea (14% vs. 8%).
As with all AstraZeneca products, the company will work to ensure that physicians and patients understand both the benefits and risks associated with BRILINTA. For BRILINTA, one of the ways AstraZeneca will help ensure physicians and patients are appropriately informed about bleeding risk and the impact of aspirin dose on the effectiveness of BRILINTA is through a Risk eva luation Mitigation Strategy (REMS).
According to the American Heart Association, over one million Americans are hospitalized with ACS every year. It is estimated that up to one in three patients could have a recurrent heart attack, or die within one year of their first CV event.¹
BRILINTA is now approved in 39 countries, including the US, Brazil, Australia, and Canada under the trade name BRILINTA and in the European Union under the trade name BRILIQUE™. BRILINTA is currently under regulatory review in an additional 45 countries, including Russia, India and China. BRILINTA is currently reimbursed in 7 countries.
ABOUT PLATO
PLATO was a large (18,624 patients in 43 countries) head-to-head patient outcomes study of ticagrelor versus clopidogrel, both given in combination with aspirin and other standard therapy, designed to establish whether ticagrelor could achieve a clinically meaningful reduction in cardiovascular end points in ACS patients, above and beyond those afforded by clopidogrel.
The study demonstrated that treatment with BRILINTA led to a greater reduction in the primary end point – a composite of CV death, MI, or stroke – compared to patients who received clopidogrel (9.8% vs. 11.7% at 12 months; 1.9% absolute risk reduction [ARR]; 16% relative risk reduction [RRR]; 95% CI, 0.77 to 0.92; P<0.001). The difference in treatments was driven by CV death and MI with no difference in stroke. In PLATO, the absolute difference in treatment benefit versus clopidogrel was seen at 30 days and the Kaplan-Meier survival curves continue to diverge throughout the 12 month treatment period.
The study also demonstrated that treatment with BRILINTA for 12 months was associated with a 21 percent RRR in CV death (4% vs. 5.1%; 1.1% ARR; P=0.001) and a 16 percent RRR in MI compared to clopidogrel at 12 months (5.8% vs. 6.9%; 1.1% ARR; P<0.005).
In a post hoc analysis of PLATO, it was d |
