10 years of ARISTOTLE trial: results and lessons

In 2021, the world cardiology community celebrates the anniversary of one of the greatest research in clinical medicine - the Apixaban for Reduction in Stroke and Other Thromboembolic Events in Atrial Fibrillation (ARISTOTLE) study. The study showed that in patients with atrial fibrillation, the use of apixaban was more effective than the use of warfarin in the prevention of stroke or systemic embolism, was accompanied by a lower frequency of bleeding and was associated with lower mortality from all causes. To date, 77 subanalyses of this ambitious study have been published, a brief overview of which is given in the article. As shown by the post-hoc analysis of the ARISTOTLE study, apixaban was equally effective and safe both in patients without comorbidities and in polymorbid patients. The efficacy and safety of apixaban has been demonstrated in atrial fibrillation and in the presence of comorbidities, including diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, obesity, and coronary heart disease. A number of subanalyses of the ARISTOTLE study are devoted to the prognostic assessment of biomarkers such as cardiac troponins, growth differentiation factor-15, pro-B-type N-terminal natriuretic peptide, D-dimer, asymmetric and symmetric dimethylarginine, interleukin-6, C-reactive protein. Based on the study of biomarkers, new, more informative scales for assessing the risk of stroke, death and bleeding were created: the ABC-stroke scale, the ABC-lethal outcome scale and the ABC-bleeding scale. The data of the corresponding sub-analyzes confirmed the greater efficacy and/or safety of apixaban treatment compared with warfarin, regardless of the level of various biomarkers in blood plasma and the degree of risk of stroke, death and bleeding, assessed using both traditional and new scales.

ARISTOTLE trial, apixaban, atrial fibrillation, concomitant diseases, multimorbidity, biomarkers, ABC scale