Background: Intracoronary thrombus formation is a main cause of acute myocardial infarction triggered by platelet activation. However, there are no data on the impact of different treatment strategies with antiplatelet agents before percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) on histological characteristics of thrombus formation.
Objective: In this study, we investigate the impact of preinterventional administration of the P2Y12-inhibitors clopidogrel and prasugrel on thrombus composition, highlighting significant changes associated with the antiplatelet pre-treatment.
Methods: We prospectively enrolled 104 consecutive patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing immediate PCI and thrombus aspiration by immunohistochemical staining along with RNA-sequencing employing Nanostring analysis. Fifty-two patients were treated with either prasugrel loading (60 mg) or clopidogrel loading (600 mg) prior to PCI, respectively.
Results: In Patients with STEMI, intracoronary thrombus architecture was significantly altered between patients pre-treated with prasugrel when compared to clopidogrel. Fibrin content of thrombi was significantly decreased (41.8 % versus 66.7 %, p = 0.009) after pre-treatment with prasugrel compared to clopidogrel. Furthermore, levels of MPO positive cells in intracoronary thrombi were significantly decreased in patients with prasugrel pre-treatment (90.5 versus 201.1, p = 0.014) indicating an association of antiplatelet pre-treatment and the inflammatory responses during thrombus formation. Most strikingly, we observed significant differences among both pre-treatment groups regarding altered RNA expression and signaling pathways of thrombo-inflammatory processes within the thrombotic material, which were independently associated with antiplatelet strategies.
Conclusions: Our study elucidates the impact of antiplatelet pre-treatment on thrombus remodeling and architecture, thereby lowering the risk of recurrent adverse cardiovascular events in prasugrel-treated patients.
Keywords: Antiplatelet treatment; Fibrin; Inflammation; Myocardial infarction; Thrombus architecture.
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