Why the study?
What are the methodological issues of retrospective studies assessing health outcomes of potential clopidogrel-statin interaction?
What are the methodological issues of retrospective studies assessing health outcomes of potential clopidogrel-statin interaction?
Retrospective studies evaluating clopidogrel-statin interactions have significant methodological limitations that must be addressed to understand their true clinical impact.
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Clinicians should interpret retrospective clopidogrel-statin data cautiously; leaves open true interaction effects pending rigorous prospective studies.
OBJECTIVE: Clopidogrel and statins have been commonly coprescribed to patients with atherosclerotic diseases. Clopidogrel-statin interaction was initially described by ex vivo studies, but was not well supported by studies examining health outcomes. This personal view article aims to discuss methodological issues of these studies, especially the retrospective studies assessing health outcomes. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was conducted to identify journal articles of clopidogrel-statin interaction that were published in English since January 2003. KEY FINDINGS: The limitations of retrospective studies include lack of central blinded adjudication of clinical events, incomplete assessment of confounders, inadequate comparison groups and inconsistent use of medication dosage. CONCLUSION: A well-designed retrospective study may better understand potential clopidogrel-statin interaction and its clinical impacts.
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Liu et al. (2014) studied this question.
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